Claude Is Blind To The Best Content On The Internet
Paste Claude a YouTube link and it guesses from the title, or it grabs a transcript that misses 90% of what's actually on the screen.
That's a real problem, because the best tutorials on the internet are videos. Somebody shows you exactly how they do the thing, step by step, and your AI is sitting there blind. Every "here's my exact workflow" video is knowledge you can't hand off.
The fix is a free skill called /watch. Here's what it does and how to install it.
It Actually Watches The Video
You paste a video and ask a question. Behind the scenes it does four things:
- Grabs the captions if the video has them. Free and instant.
- Downloads the video and pulls out frames as images. Not random frames. It watches for scene changes and grabs the moments where something actually happened.
- Gets a timestamped transcript. Captions first, and if there are none, it sends the audio off to be transcribed.
- Hands Claude the frames and the transcript together.
That last step is the whole thing. Claude reads every frame as an actual image. By the time it answers you, it has seen what was on screen and heardwhat was said. It isn't summarizing a description. It watched the video.
It works on YouTube, Loom, TikTok, X, Instagram, and a few hundred other sites. It also works on files sitting on your computer, so screen recordings and client videos are fair game.
Free, Open Source, Two Minutes
The repo:
Almost 15,000 people have starred it. It's free and open source.
The easy way. Open Claude Code and tell it:
That's it. Claude reads the repo and sets it up.
The official way, if you want the exact commands. In Claude Code, run these two:
Installing it as a plugin means it auto-updates. Update later with /plugin update watch@claude-video.
Using Codex, Cursor, or something else? One line in your terminal:
On claude.ai in your browser? Download the watch.skill file from the repo's Releases page, then go to Settings, Capabilities, Skills, and hit the +.
One honest note on setup: it needs two free tools called yt-dlp and ffmpegto do the downloading and frame-grabbing. On a Mac it installs them for you the first time you run it. On Windows or Linux it prints the exact commands to paste. You don't need an API key unless you feed it a video with no captions at all.
Four Steps, Start To Finish
- Start a new conversation in Claude Code.
- Type
/watchand pick the skill from the list. - Paste your YouTube link.
- Tell it what you want.
That's the whole flow. The magic is in step 4.
Don't Ask For A Summary. Ask For A Skill.
A summary sits in a chat you'll never scroll back to. Here's the prompt that changes everything:
Now Claude doesn't just tell you what the video said. It packages the method into a skill file. Next time you need that knowledge, you type a slash command and Claude already knows how to do it.
I ran this on a video about building high-end websites. What came out was a skill with five stacked hacks in it: build from a real reference site instead of from scratch, extract the design system into a spec file, generate an AI hero background video, make that video scrub as you scroll, and drop in ready-made premium components.
That's not a summary. That's a permanent capability. I type one command and Claude builds a website that looks like a $10,000 agency job.
And this works for any real-world skill you want your AI to have. Cold email frameworks. Ad structures. Sales call openers. Editing workflows. Bookkeeping processes. If somebody put it in a video, you can turn it into a skill.
Five Ways To Use It This Week
Reverse-engineer content that's working.Point it at a competitor's viral video and ask what hook they opened with. It looks at the first frames and breaks down the structure, not just the words.
Steal a process from a tutorial.Any "here's my exact workflow" video becomes a skill you own.
Debug from a screen recording.A client sends you a video of something broken on their site. Point it at the file and ask what's going wrong. It finds the frame where it breaks.
Cut the fluff out of an update video.Ask it "what's actually new, skip the hype." A ten-minute launch video becomes four bullets.
Turn a course into notes. Run it across a playlist and file a summary per video. Hours of content become something you can search.
One Thing To Know About Long Videos
Every frame Claude looks at costs you something. The skill handles this automatically. Short videos get dense coverage. Anything over ten minutes gets a lighter scan, and it'll warn you that it's skimming.
If you care about a specific part, say so. "What happens around the 2:30 mark" gets you way more detail on that window than asking about the whole video. Focus beats coverage.
Do This Today
Pick one video. Not a random one. The one you keep meaning to sit down and actually watch, the one with the method you know you should be using.
Install the skill. Point it at that video. Ask for a reusable skill.
Ten minutes from now you'll have a capability instead of a bookmark.