Kb Yt Channel

---
name: kb-yt-channel
description: Creates and maintains Knowledge Base topics from YouTube channels by resolving recent or full uploads, scaffolding yt-channels topics, ingesting transcripts through kb ingest youtube, and validating/indexing the result. Use when turning a YouTube channel into a Karpathy KB topic. Do not use for single-video ingestion, general video summaries, or non-YouTube sources.
---

# KB YouTube Channel

## Required Inputs

- Channel URL, such as https://www.youtube.com/@aiDotEngineer.
- Topic slug, such as ai-dot-engineer.
- Topic title and domain.
- Video selection: either --limit N for the newest uploads or --all for the full uploads list.
- Transcript policy: --transcribe captions, auto, or stt.
- Indexing policy: lexical QMD indexing by default; pass --embed when vector embeddings are explicitly needed.

## Procedure

**Step 1: Confirm Prerequisites**
1. Run kb version from the vault root.
2. Run yt-dlp --version from the vault root.
3. Run qmd --version when final indexing is required.
4. If --transcribe stt is selected, confirm ffmpeg -version and the configured STT provider credentials.

**Step 2: Run Channel Ingest**
1. Read references/channel-topic-contract.md when topic metadata or output validation is unclear.
2. Execute python3 scripts/ingest-channel.py from this skill directory, passing:
   - --vault /path/to/vault
   - --channel-url <youtube-channel-url>
   - --topic-slug <slug>
   - --title <title>
   - --domain <domain>
   - either --limit <n> or --all
   - --transcribe captions|auto|stt
   - optionally --embed for vector embedding after collection sync
3. Treat the script's JSON stdout as the run summary. Treat stderr as progress and diagnostics.

Example:

    python3 .agents/skills/kb-yt-channel/scripts/ingest-channel.py --vault . --channel-url https://www.youtube.com/@aiDotEngineer --topic-slug ai-dot-engineer --title "AI Engineer Channel" --domain youtube-channel --limit 10 --transcribe captions

**Step 3: Verify The Topic**
1. Confirm kb topic info yt-channels/<slug> returns the expected topic path and source count.
2. Confirm <topic>/outputs/reports/ contains the channel ingest report for the run.
3. Confirm kb search "<channel topic>" --topic yt-channels/<slug> --collection <slug> --lex --format json returns raw transcript or index content after indexing.
4. Leave wiki article compilation to the normal kb compile workflow unless the user explicitly asks for article synthesis.

## Error Handling

- If channel resolution fails, read references/troubleshooting.md and retry after updating yt-dlp or YouTube proxy/cookie settings.
- If captions are unavailable and --transcribe captions was selected, report the failed video and rerun only when the user chooses --transcribe auto or stt.
- If STT fails, read references/troubleshooting.md to check ffmpeg, provider credentials, model, chunk size, and network settings.
- If a partial topic exists after failure, rerun the same command. The script reuses the existing topic and skips videos whose source URLs are already present in raw/youtube.