Talk to YouTube – RAG for YouTube Videos
Hi HN, I built this little application for setting up RAG on Youtube video transcripts. I haven't seen a lot of RAG for multimodal use-cases so I thought this was interesting. It uses YoutubeDL to get transcripts and Vectara to set up the RAG system. It's multilingual so other languages besides english work as well. The answer produced by the LLM has references with timestamps to where its deriving information from from within the video. Right now the interface is a clunky terminal but I'm planning on adding a UI or maybe a voice I/O interface to the app. Full disclosure: I work at…
In plain words
Talk to YouTube is a retrieval-augmented generation tool that lets users ask questions about YouTube video content. It extracts transcripts from videos and uses Vectara to build a searchable knowledge base, supporting multiple languages. Answers include timestamped references showing exactly where in the video the information comes from. Currently operated through a terminal interface, it's designed for anyone wanting to extract and query information from YouTube videos without watching them in full.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
In the maker’s words, at launch
Hi HN, I built this little application for setting up RAG on Youtube video transcripts. I haven't seen a lot of RAG for multimodal use-cases so I thought this was interesting. It uses YoutubeDL to get transcripts and Vectara to set up the RAG system. It's multilingual so other languages besides english work as well. The answer produced by the LLM has references with timestamps to where its deriving information from from within the video. Right now the interface is a clunky terminal but I'm planning on adding a UI or maybe a voice I/O interface to the app. Full disclosure: I work at Vectara, but this was a personal/side-project!
Does a similar job
all alternatives →- IMI made a website that converts YT videos into step-by-step guides2024 · stepify.tech · ▲271
Hey HN, I've been working on this side project for the past month. It generates a step-by-step tutorial guide for YouTube videos that you can follow along without watching long videos. Best suited for tutorial videos but can work for other videos aswell. No BS. Just straight to the point. The guides are generated from pure transcript so you don't have to worry about it being AI. It's my first project as a total beginner. Something I had to do inorder to get out of tutorial hell. Please let me know if you have any suggestions or if you face any problems or bugs. I would try to fix them to the…
- TATurn any website into a knowledge base for LLMs2024 · embedding.io · ▲305
I built this tool because I wanted a way to just take a bunch of URLs or domains, and query their content in RAG applications. It takes away the pain of crawling, extracting content, chunking, vectorizing, and updating periodically. I'm curious to see if it can be useful to others. I meant to launch this six months ago but life got in the way...
- BCBulk Creation of Transcripts from YouTube Playlists with Whisper2023 · github.com · ▲125
I know there are various tools that are supposed to make this easy, but I couldn't find anything that did everything I wanted, so I made this today for fun. The web-based offerings all take forever and seem flaky, and you need to process one video at a time, with no control over the transcription settings. In contrast, my script lets you convert a whole playlist in bulk with full control over everything. It's truly easy to use-- you can clone the repo, install to a venv, and be generating a folder full of high quality transcript text files in under 5 minutes. All you need to do is supply the…
- IBI built a browser-based tutorial for learning RAG for LLMs2024 · takehomes.com · ▲25
Hey all! I wanted to share this project I've been working on that can maybe help you or your developer friends out. I built a RAG system for our product a while back and didn't realize how easy they were to get started. So I put together my learnings into this online course. It's not quite ready but if you sign up and mention HackerNews, I can get you early access. I'm looking to get feedback on the following: (1) materials — is it engaging & did you learn something? (2) UI/UX of the platform — did you have any issues that prevented you from starting or finishing the tutorial? (3)…
- CWChat with Garry Tan using RAG on his YouTube channel2023 · gtan-chat.arguflow.ai · ▲20
More ai this month
the category →
I trained a 125M-parameter transformer to autocomplete piano performances in real time (~108 notes/sec on an iPhone 15). The idea is basically GitHub Copilot or Tabnine, except instead of prompting it with code, you prompt it by playing a few notes on a MIDI piano. The model then continues what you played, entirely on-device. The app is free if anyone wants to try it. Happy to answer questions about the model, training, Core ML, or the many things that didn't work.
AI · 17d ago · simedw.com
Astute▲585Automate your B2B brand going viral, with new media creators
AI · 19d ago · company-app.joinastute.com
Hey HN, Henry from Cactus here! We previously released Cactus Needle, a 14MB agentic LLM for tool call, device use, and structured extraction for phones, wearables, smart homes, small robots and microcontrollers. We got really great feedback here, and have now incorporated the suggestions to release Needle 2. The whole model is a single 14MB binary that runs a full session in 28MB of RAM; 45m parameters at 2bit compression. Needle hits 500 tokens/sec decode speed on a Raspberry Pi 5, sits between 400-1,500 tokens/sec on VR devices like Meta Quest 3S and Apple Vision Pro, and ranges…
AI · 27d ago · cactuscompute.com
Launched alongside, October 2023
the whole month →
Nudge 2.0▲1,051In-app experiences to activate, retain, & understand users
Growth · 2023 · nudgenow.com
Unlock AI magic for elevated customer engagement, fast
AI · 2023 · tiledesk.com
- OD
Effortlessly discover API behaviour with a Chrome extension that automatically generates OpenAPI specifications in real time for any app or website.
Dev tools · 2023 · github.com