Scarnon

scarnon

**"Scarnon?"** — Australian for *"what's going on?"*

A [Claude Code](https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/claude-code) skill that rips through YouTube so you don't have to. Chuck it a topic, it'll find the videos, grab the transcripts, and give you the good oil — all without leaving your terminal.

Thanks to [geelen](https://github.com/geelen) for the nudge to turn this into a skill and release it.


What's it do

You say `/scarnon nuclear fusion breakthroughs` and it:

1. Searches YouTube from multiple angles (4 parallel queries, ~30 seconds flat)
2. Filters out the rubbish — no one asked for Shroud of Turin when they searched for fusion
3. Clusters the results into sensible groups (explainers, debates, interviews, etc.)
4. Lets you pick which clusters and videos you actually care about
5. Downloads subtitles in parallel (auto-captions, no Whisper needed for ~80% of videos)
6. Fans out to Haiku subagents — each one reads a transcript and sends back a tight summary, keeping the main context lean as
7. Synthesises across videos with lenses you choose: shared themes, contradictions, fact checks, open questions, whatever
8. Gives you timestamped quotes so you can jump straight to the good bits

The whole thing runs in about 2 minutes for 3 videos. Not bad for a bloke in a terminal.

Installation

Chuck it in your skills directory:

git clone https://github.com/ryan-allen/scarnon.git ~/.claude/skills/scarnon

Or just paste this repo URL into Claude Code and say *"oi install this skill for me yeah"* — it'll figure it out. She's not stupid.

That's it. She'll show up as `/scarnon` next time you fire up Claude Code.

Dependencies

Scarnon installs tools **as it needs them**, not all up front. First time you run a search it'll check for `yt-dlp` and offer to install it. You won't get asked about `ffmpeg` or `mlx_whisper` until you actually need them (which for auto-captions