Turn a YouTube link into a clean Obsidian note with:

• properties/frontmatter
• local thumbnail download
• AI-generated summary
• collapsed transcript callout
• notes section for your own writing

This is a workflow setup for Obsidian desktop using QuickAdd, Templater, and a Python helper script. It is not a standalone Obsidian plugin.

This project turns a YouTube link into a structured Obsidian note. It uses QuickAdd to trigger the workflow, Templater to generate the note, a Python helper to fetch the thumbnail and transcript, and the OpenAI API to generate a summary.

The result is a note with:

• frontmatter properties
• a local thumbnail
• an open summary callout
• a collapsed transcript callout
• a notes section

• Create a note from a YouTube URL
• Save the thumbnail locally in the vault
• Generate an AI summary with the OpenAI API
• Insert a collapsed transcript callout
• Add structured frontmatter/properties
• Create a clean notes section for manual annotations

• Obsidian desktop
• QuickAdd plugin
• Templater plugin
• Python 3.9+
• OpenAI API key

Enable and install:

• QuickAdd
• Templater

Create these folders:

• Templates
• scripts
• Assets/YouTube
• Notes/YouTube

• Templates/YouTube Note.md → Templates/
• scripts/youtube_helper.py → scripts/
• scripts/youtube_note.js → scripts/

python3 -m pip install requests youtube-transcript-api openai

Create a file at:

scripts/.env

Add:

OPENAI_API_KEY=your_key_here
YOUTUBE_SUMMARY_MODEL=gpt-5.4-mini

Set:

• Template folder location: Templates
• User Script Functions folder: scripts

Also enable:

• Trigger Templater on new file creation

Create a Template choice with:

• Name: YouTube Note
• Template Path: Templates/YouTube Note.md

Run the YouTube Note QuickAdd command and paste a YouTube URL.

The workflow will:

1. create a note
2. fetch the thumbnail
3. fetch the transcript
4. generate an AI summary
5. insert everything into a structured Obsidian note

Each generated note includes:

• frontmatter/properties
• thumbnail image
• open Summary callout
• collapsed Transcript callout
• Notes section

• Transcript extraction depends on public transcript availability.
• This workflow is desktop-only.
• This is not an official Obsidian plugin.
• An OpenAI API key is required for AI summaries.

Usually this means the OpenAI API key was not found or could not be used.

Check:

• scripts/.env exists
• OPENAI_API_KEY is valid
• openai is installed in the same Python environment used by Obsidian

Some videos do not expose transcripts, and some transcript fetches fail even when the video has captions.

Make sure Templater is configured correctly and that Trigger Templater on new file creation is enabled.

MIT Release Notes

Initial public release of the Obsidian YouTube capture workflow.

• Create a note from a YouTube URL
• Save the thumbnail locally in the vault
• Generate an AI summary with the OpenAI API
• Insert a collapsed transcript callout
• Add structured frontmatter/properties
• Create a clean notes section for manual annotations

• Obsidian
• QuickAdd
• Templater
• Python
• youtube-transcript-api
• OpenAI API