Usage

`transcript get <url>`

Shell

transcript get "https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ"

If you're not signed in yet, get starts the browser login flow automatically, then continues once you confirm. Language defaults to auto — the language is detected for you (captions in their original language, or auto-detected by ASR); pass --lang only to force a specific one.

The transcript is written to stdout; progress/status messages (a spinner while downloading, a progress bar while transcribing) go to stderr — so the command is pipe-clean:

Shell

transcript get "https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ" > transcript.txt
transcript get "https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ" -o json | jq '.segments[0]'

Flags

Flag	Default	Description
`-o, --output`	`txt`	Output format: `json`, `txt`, `srt`, `vtt`, `md`, `table`.
`--timestamp`	`false`	Include timestamps. Applies to `txt`, `md`, and `table`.
`--lang`	`auto`	Transcript language. `auto` (default) detects it for you.
`--api-key`		Overrides `TRANSCRIPT_API_KEY` and the key saved by `login`.
`--quiet`	`false`	Suppress progress output on stderr.

txt (the default) is plain text with no timestamps. md is Markdown — paragraphs by default, or a Markdown table with --timestamp. table renders a bordered terminal table. Write to a file with shell redirection (> file), not a flag.

Examples

transcript get "https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ"

Errors

get exits non-zero with a clear message on stderr for:

An invalid or unsupported URL
A monthly transcription quota running out
A plan that doesn't include AI transcription for a caption-less video (upgrade to Pro or Ultra)
A rate limit (the CLI retries automatically with backoff while polling a job — this only surfaces if it's still rate-limited after retrying)
The transcription job itself failing (e.g. an unavailable video)

`transcript login`

Shell

transcript login

Signs the CLI in through a browser device-authorization flow and stores an API key at ~/.config/transcript/config.json. get runs this for you automatically when you're not signed in, so you rarely call it directly. See Authentication for how the flow works and how credentials are resolved.

`transcript logout`

Shell

transcript logout

Removes the stored API key. Other saved preferences are kept.

`transcript --version`

Prints the installed release version.

`transcript --help`

Full command/flag reference, generated by the CLI itself.