The Problem
“Watch later” list had 100+ videos — never got to them. Built overnight automation: drop YouTube link into Notion → while I sleep, AI transcribes and formats → in the morning, a clean readable article. Read a 1-hour video in 12 minutes.
A note on fairness: When I save knowledge from a video, I keep the video playing so the author still gets a view.
Before / After
Before: Save 60-minute conference talk to “watch later” → never watch → knowledge locked in video
After: Share link to Telegram bot → goes to Notion → sleep → at 7:00 AM a 12-minute readable transcript is waiting → highlight insights → search across all saved videos
Impact: 5x time savings. 95% transcription accuracy. Instant search across 50 videos. Handles 3-hour lectures. ~$0.20 per hour of video.
How It Works
Step 1: Find video, share link to Telegram bot. Goes to Notion “Videos to Process.”
Step 2: At 2:00 AM automation runs. Downloads audio. AI transcribes (long lectures are chunked). Another AI removes fillers, adds paragraphs and section headings.
Step 3: Formatted transcript appears on same Notion page. Ready in the morning.
Result: 1-hour video becomes 12-minute read. Can search all transcripts, highlight, annotate.
Technical Architecture
- Notion Monitoring: Nightly cron queries for pages with YouTube links and empty transcript
- Video Download: yt-dlp, audio-only for speed
- Smart Chunking: <30 min → whole; >30 min → 10-min splits via ffmpeg
- Whisper Transcription: Parallel chunk processing, automatic language detection
- AI Structuring (Claude): Removes fillers, adds paragraphs and section headings
- Notion Update: Formatted transcript pushed back to same page