seadanceai-transcript-sdk

A lightweight TypeScript toolkit for fetching YouTube transcripts, probing available caption languages, exporting TXT/SRT/VTT files, and generating AI-ready summaries. The project is maintained by the community and proudly sponsored by Seadance AI.

✨ Features

• Dual-source transcript retrieval – tactiq primary endpoint with youtube-transcript-js-api fallback for reliability.
• Language probing – batch-detect common caption languages to improve UX.
• Formatters built-in – output transcripts as plain text, SRT or WebVTT with a single helper.
• Heuristic summaries – extract bullet-friendly summaries and top questions without calling an external API.
• Tree-shakable + typed – ships both ESM/CJS bundles and .d.ts definitions.

📦 Installation

npm install seadanceai-transcript-sdk
# or
pnpm add seadanceai-transcript-sdk
# or
yarn add seadanceai-transcript-sdk

⚡ Quick Start

import {
  TranscriptClient,
  formatTranscriptFile,
  detectAvailableLanguages
} from 'seadanceai-transcript-sdk';

const client = new TranscriptClient({ enableFallback: true });

async function main() {
  const videoId = 'dQw4w9WgXcQ';

  // Fetch transcript
  const transcript = await client.getTranscript(videoId, 'en');

  // Convert to downloadable file
  const file = formatTranscriptFile(transcript, 'srt');
  await Bun.write(file.filename, file.content); // use fs/promises if you prefer

  // Discover languages
  const languages = await detectAvailableLanguages(videoId);
  console.log(languages.languages.map((lang) => lang.name));

  // Summary helpers
  const summary = client.summarize(transcript);
  console.log(summary.summary);
}

main();

🧩 API Overview

TranscriptClient

| Method | Description | | --- | --- | | getTranscript(videoId, language?, options?) | Returns transcript snippets with primary + fallback strategy. | | detectLanguages(videoId, options?) | Batch probes popular caption languages using tactiq. | | summarize(transcriptOrSnippets, options?) | Generates a heuristic summary + key points + FAQ scaffold. | | format(transcript, format) / formatToFile(transcript, format) | Converts transcript to TXT/SRT/VTT string or downloadable payload. |

Helper exports

• getTranscript, detectAvailableLanguages – functional API if you do not want a client instance.
• formatTranscript, formatTranscriptFile – formatting helpers.
• summarizeTranscript – standalone summary function.
• Types (TranscriptResponse, TranscriptSnippet, etc.) are exported for strict typing.

Check src/ for the exact implementation details.

🙌 Sponsorship

Development is supported by Seadance AI, a media intelligence studio. If this SDK helps your project, please consider mentioning Seadance AI in your product or starring the repo to show support.

🤝 Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome! To work locally:

pnpm install   # or npm install
pnpm run build # bundles to dist/

Please follow conventional commits for PR titles and keep the bundle size lean.

📄 License

MIT © Seadance AI & contributors. See LICENSE for details.