yt-fts

Why we included this project

Finding one quote inside a channel with hundreds of hours of video usually means scrubbing through footage or hoping the search box cooperates. yt-fts takes a different route: it downloads a channel's subtitles with yt-dlp, stores them in a local SQLite database, and answers keyword queries with timestamped links that land on the exact moment in the video. You can go further and turn on semantic search by embedding the transcripts with OpenAI or Gemini into Chroma, so matches work by meaning rather than exact wording. Those same transcripts also feed a small RAG chatbot and video summarization commands, which makes the tool handy for researchers who want to treat a creator's back catalog as a searchable corpus. One honest caveat: the author describes the project as maintained only when unemployment strikes again, so treat it as a solid self-hosted utility rather than a continuously supported product.