Apify Tool Converts YouTube Videos Into RAG-Ready Transcript Chunks via One API Call

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A developer has published a YouTube Transcript API Actor on Apify that converts any YouTube video into structured transcript formats including SRT, VTT, plain text, and RAG-optimized chunks. The tool requires no YouTube API key or cookies, and each text chunk includes precise start and end timestamps in seconds, allowing AI chatbots to cite exact moments in a video. It supports individual videos, entire channels, and playlists, and can also be accessed as an MCP tool through mcp.apify.com, enabling direct integration with AI clients like Claude and Cursor. The service follows a pay-per-delivered-transcript model, and videos without captions are not charged. The tool is aimed at developers building LLM-powered applications such as RAG chatbots, video search engines, or course summarization tools.

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