talks-outline

Exhaustive, shareable markdown outlines of talks (YouTube links, a urls.txt, or transcripts) in software engineering, value investing, and self-help — outlined in parallel through a shared work queue that other AI agents can join.

Outputs: ~/Downloads/talks-outlines/summaries/<slug>-<date>.md per talk + talks-outline-index.md (one collection point across every project). Outline language = spoken language of the talk.

Install (Claude Code + Codex CLI — one command)

bash ~/.claude/skills/talks-outline/install.sh

First-time setup / new machine: all skill artifacts are backed up in ~/Downloads/talks-outlines/scripts/ (synced via Google Drive). Run from there:

bash ~/Downloads/talks-outlines/scripts/install.sh

It copies everything into ~/.claude/skills/talks-outline/, creates the venv, and sets up both Claude and Codex. Works from any location. The installer sets up both Claude Code and Codex CLI in one step:

Claude agent definition, Python venv, output directories, permission rules
Codex custom prompt (~/.codex/prompts/talks-outline.md) and AGENTS.md
urls.txt template and reenrich-prompt.md in the output folder

Safe to re-run — every step is idempotent. Requires python3-venv (sudo apt install python3-venv on Debian/Ubuntu). Restart Claude Code once if ~/.claude/agents/ did not exist before.

Manual install (if you prefer)

mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills ~/.claude/agents ~/.codex/prompts
unzip talks-outline.skill -d ~/.claude/skills/
cp ~/.claude/skills/talks-outline/agents/talks-outliner.md ~/.claude/agents/
cp ~/.claude/skills/talks-outline/codex/talks-outline.md ~/.codex/prompts/
chmod +x ~/.claude/skills/talks-outline/scripts/talks-queue.sh
cd ~/.claude/skills/talks-outline
python3 -m venv .venv && .venv/bin/pip install youtube-transcript-api yt-dlp
mkdir -p ~/Downloads/talks-outlines/summaries

Use

Paste links, or point at a urls.txt: /talks-outline <link> <link> · /talks-outline seed ~/talks/urls.txt
Continue a seeded batch: /talks-outline work-queue
Re-enrich thin outlines (Mode B): /talks-outline reenrich ~/Downloads/talks-outlines/summaries

Each talk gets its own queue worker that fetches and outlines, so a batch runs in parallel (4–6 workers; YouTube rate-limits beyond that).

Multi-agent / cross-AI batches: see USAGE.md. Any agent (Codex CLI, Gemini CLI, a second machine) joins the same /tmp/talks-queue.tsv with a unique tag and AGENT-BRIEF.md.

Claude.ai (web / mobile)

Click Save skill on the .skill card, then paste a transcript and say “detail outline this”. Outlines come back as downloadable .md files. (No YouTube fetching or parallel subagents on this surface — paste transcripts.)

Unattended / batch runs (nobody at the keyboard)

The skill never asks questions. To stop Claude Code itself from prompting, add these rules to ~/.claude/settings.json (user scope = every project):

{
  "permissions": {
    "allow": [
      "Bash(~/.claude/skills/talks-outline/.venv/bin/python *)",
      "Bash(~/.claude/skills/talks-outline/scripts/talks-queue.sh *)",
      "Bash(python3 *)",
      "Bash(flock *)",
      "Edit(~/Downloads/talks-outlines/summaries/**)",
      "Edit(talks-work/**)"
    ]
  }
}

Notes: file rules must be Edit(...) — a Write(...) rule is accepted but never consulted. Bash(cmd *) is prefix matching on the whole command, so each part of a compound command must match a rule; the fetcher and queue helper are invoked as single commands for this reason. Verify with /permissions inside Claude Code.

Start the session so edits don’t prompt either:

claude remote-control --name talks --permission-mode acceptEdits    # control from the mobile app
# or headless:
claude -p "/talks-outline seed ~/talks/urls.txt" --permission-mode acceptEdits

macOS: background sessions need Full Disk Access (or an explicit Downloads grant) for the terminal app before they can write to ~/Downloads.

Push notification when a batch finishes

In the Claude Code terminal run /config and turn on Push when Claude decides (and Push when actions required to forward permission prompts). Requires the Claude mobile app signed in to the same account, OS notifications allowed, and an active Remote Control session. You can also add “notify me when the outlines are done” to your prompt.