YouTube Channel Monitor (AssemblyAI)

Monitor YouTube channels and auto-transcribe new videos using AssemblyAI cloud API. Zero local dependencies beyond requests.

Prerequisites

AssemblyAI account: https://www.assemblyai.com/app/signup (free, 100 hours/month)
API Key: from Dashboard
requests library (usually pre-installed with OpenClaw/Python)

Setup API Key

Choose one:

# Option A: environment variable
export ASSEMBLYAI_API_KEY="your-key"

# Option B: config file
echo '{"api_key": "your-key"}' > data/config.json

How It Works

Channel page → innertube API → audio direct URL → AssemblyAI cloud → text + summary

No local audio download, no Whisper, no ffmpeg. AssemblyAI handles everything server-side.

Commands

# Transcribe a single video
python3 scripts/monitor.py now "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID"

# Add a channel to monitor
python3 scripts/monitor.py add "https://www.youtube.com/@ChannelName/videos" "Alias"

# Check all channels for new videos + transcribe
python3 scripts/monitor.py check [count_per_channel]

# List channels
python3 scripts/monitor.py list

# Remove channel
python3 scripts/monitor.py remove "Alias"

Important Notes

Audio URL extraction uses YouTube's innertube API (pure requests).
Works on normal residential IPs. Datacenter IPs may get blocked by YouTube.
If audio URL extraction fails with UNPLAYABLE, the IP may be flagged — this is a YouTube limitation, not a bug.
Free tier: 100 hours/month of transcription.
Transcription takes ~70-80% of video duration.
Results saved to data/summaries/{video_id}.json.

Output Format

Each result includes:

text: full transcription
summary: AI-generated paragraph summary
confidence: transcription confidence score
utterances: timestamped segments with speaker labels

Files

| Path | Purpose | |------|---------| | data/channels.json | monitored channels | | data/processed.json | already-transcribed video IDs | | data/summaries/*.json | transcription results | | data/config.json | API key (optional) |