yt.r-dh.com — YouTube transcript API for LLMs

USAGE
  GET /?url=<youtube-url>            plain text transcript
  GET /<video-id>                    plain text transcript (11-char id)
  GET /?url=<url>&format=json        JSON with metadata + transcript
  GET /<video-id>?format=json        JSON with metadata + transcript
  GET /llms.txt                      this help text
  GET /health                        liveness probe

ACCEPTED URL FORMS
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=<id>
  https://youtu.be/<id>
  https://www.youtube.com/shorts/<id>
  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=<id>
  https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=<id>
  <id>        (bare 11-character video id)

EXAMPLES
  curl https://yt.r-dh.com/?url=https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ
  curl https://yt.r-dh.com/dQw4w9WgXcQ
  curl 'https://yt.r-dh.com/?url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ&format=json'

JSON SHAPE
  {
    "video_id": "<id>",
    "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=<id>",
    "title": "<string or null>",
    "channel": "<string or null>",
    "duration_sec": <number or null>,
    "transcript": "<string>"
  }

NOTES
  - Returns the English transcript (manual subs preferred, auto-captions fallback).
  - Rolling-window duplicates from auto-captions are filtered out.
  - Videos without any English captions return HTTP 404 with "no captions available".
  - Private / age-restricted / unavailable / region-locked videos return HTTP 404
    with a short reason. The error is plain text, one line, no stack traces.
  - No auth, no rate limit. Be reasonable.