Transcribe Skill — Communication skill for Claude Code

[!IMPORTANT] **This repo has moved to [criscatalyst/creator-skills](https://github.com/criscatalyst/creator-skills/tree/main/skills/transcribe).** It is archived and no longer updated: the latest version of this skill lives there.

Install it as a plugin in Claude Code: `/plugin marketplace add criscatalyst/creator-skills` then `/plugin install transcribe@creator-skills`.

Transcribe — Claude Code skill

Transcribe any video URL (Instagram reels, TikTok, YouTube, YT Shorts, Twitter/X, Vimeo, and anything yt-dlp supports) using OpenAI Whisper running locally on your Mac. Free, no API key, no uploads.

How it works

1. You paste a video URL into Claude Code and ask "transcribe this".
2. Claude downloads only the audio with yt-dlp.
3. Pipes it into local whisper for speech-to-text.
4. Prints the transcript right back in chat.

Install (5 minutes)

1. Install dependencies (one-time)

You need [Homebrew](https://brew.sh). If you don't have it, install that first.

brew install yt-dlp ffmpeg openai-whisper

2. Install the skill

mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills
git clone https://github.com/criscatalyst/transcribe-skill.git ~/.claude/skills/transcribe
chmod +x ~/.claude/skills/transcribe/transcribe.sh

3. Try it

Start a new Claude Code session and paste:

transcribe this: https://www.instagram.com/reel/...

Claude will pick up the `transcribe` skill and run it. The first run downloads the Whisper model weights (~500MB for the default `small` model), then they're cached.

Options

• Model: defaults to small (fast, good for short-form). Use medium for noisy audio or strong accents. Use large-v3 for top-tier quality (slow).
• Language: auto-detected. On very short clips it sometimes guesses wrong — just tell Claude "transcribe in English" / "in Italian" and re-run.

Cost

Zero. Everything runs locally. No API.

Common issues

• Private reel → yt-dlp fails. You need to be logged in; Claude will offer