Link a YouTube tutorial. Say, “Implement this.”

What the AI will do

• Turns a YouTube tutorial into clear steps you can follow without replaying the video.
• Gets the transcript or helps retrieve it when the link alone does not work, checks supporting files and fills in steps shown on screen where it can.

What you can provide

• The YouTube URL. If you want the guide tailored, add a sentence about what you want to do.
• Only if access needs your help: a pasted transcript, a permitted recording or a screenshot of a specific moment.

Where you'll take part

• Clarify a choice if it changes the guide, then read the steps and decide whether you want the AI to help carry them out.

What you'll get

A step-by-step guide with prerequisites, useful timestamps and a way to check the result, with any missing details clearly marked.

Activity context

YouTube is full of useful videos about AI and other things you would like to know how to do. Who has time to watch them all? Even when you do watch, remembering the exact steps is another job. Paste the URL into a chatbot and ask it to turn the tutorial into instructions you can use. If the chatbot cannot read the video directly, it can help get the transcript. Once you have the guide, you can ask it to help implement it.

For the user

Paste the prompt and the video URL into your AI chat. You can start with just the link. The AI will retrieve the material, ask for a small amount of help if access requires it, and give you the guide before offering to carry out the steps.

Guidance for the AI

These are general instructions, not a description of this user's particular AI system, tools, access, or circumstances. Adapt the method to the user's goal and the capabilities you can actually use, while preserving the activity's essential sequence, review points, and intended result.

Start with the activity and the user's context

Read the complete activity and guide the user through it. Use the activity prompt yourself; the user does not need to paste it again. Keep the responsibilities of the user, the AI, and any colleague clear.

Begin with what the user has already supplied. Establish the intended result and resolve missing context through focused questions when needed. Work within the activity's stated scope, permissions, required confirmations, and stopping points, including any deliberate order for introducing information. Make progress with the available information and reasonable, clearly identified assumptions where the activity allows them.

Check the capabilities needed for this work

Inspect relevant available tools, connectors, and data. Use small, relevant, non-destructive checks to establish whether necessary access or a capability actually works. Naming a product does not establish access to it. Let this activity determine what needs checking; do not impose a universal preliminary questionnaire or a full system audit.

When useful access is missing:

• Explain what you cannot reach and how that material would help.
• Investigate practical setup, connection, export, or other access alternatives before asking the user to gather material or troubleshoot.
• If progress depends on access, request only the specific user action or permission needed to enable it or provide the material another way. Continue useful independent work while awaiting the response.
• Offer to walk the user through an export or upload. Welcome files, links, copied text, rough notes, or an interview as supported by your system and the activity, and use the best available route. If the missing access is optional, continue with what is available.

Ask focused questions and respect the answers

Ask questions only when necessary to complete the work well or satisfy the activity's required review points. Build on answers already supplied. Ask one question at a time, or a small group of closely related questions. Wait on work that depends on the answer, and continue useful work that does not. Explain unfamiliar language with examples where helpful.

Confirm answers or decisions you supply on the user's behalf before treating them as the user's final answers or decisions. This does not require separate approval of every sourced finding; follow the activity's specific review requirements.

Keep evidence and independent contributions distinct

Distinguish evidence, inference, and missing information. Check your work against the source material.

Use independent agents when your system actually supports delegation and independent investigation or review would improve the work:

• Give each agent a bounded brief and the context appropriate to its role.
• Keep discovery independent until synthesis where the activity requires it. Preserve any requirement for the user or colleagues to contribute before seeing other explanations.
• Follow the activity's stated fallback and any required confirmation when independent agents or fresh contexts are unavailable. Preserve reviewer isolation where required; describe shared-context or sequential passes accurately.

Produce, check, and revise the result

Do the substantive investigation and production. Carry the activity through to the most complete, usable result within its scope, rather than ending with a plan or handing the main work back to the user. When missing information does not prevent useful work, proceed with clearly identified assumptions where the activity permits them.

Check the result against the activity's completion criteria. At each substantive delivery, state what is complete and any material unfinished work, assumptions, helpful missing information, and remaining uncertainty. Explain how these affect what the user can use, and help the user revise the result.

Preserve the activity's stopping point. Do not turn a rehearsal, investigation, or test-design activity into execution that the user has not authorized.

Your AI prompt

Turn this tutorial into instructions I can use

I will give you a YouTube tutorial URL. Retrieve its actual content and give me a clear step-by-step guide to doing the useful thing it demonstrates. Deliver the guide first. Afterward, offer to help carry it out if I want.

Start with any URL or context already supplied. If the URL is missing, ask for it and wait. Inspect the video title, creator, date, description, chapters, transcript and relevant creator-linked files using the tools you can actually access. Tell me briefly whether you obtained the video, captions, audio or only part of the source. A title or description alone is not the tutorial.

Get the source with as little effort from me as possible

Try your available video or transcript retrieval first. If it fails, investigate and attempt a suitable available fallback. The routes below were checked against primary documentation on September 13, 2026; check current instructions when a route has changed.

• Native transcript: YouTube documents Show transcript in the description for captioned videos. Use your browser tools to read it if available. Otherwise ask me to open the video, expand the description, choose Show transcript and try copying the transcript into this chat, with timestamps if possible. If that interface differs, help me locate the actual control. YouTube transcript help.
• Caption file: If you have a permitted command-line environment, check current yt-dlp documentation. List tracks with yt-dlp --no-playlist --list-subs 'VIDEO_URL'; then use yt-dlp --no-playlist --skip-download --write-subs --write-auto-subs --sub-langs 'LANGUAGE_CODE' --sub-format 'vtt/best' 'VIDEO_URL', substituting a listed language code. Read the resulting captions yourself. Handle setup and file conversion where your tools permit; ask me only for a necessary action.
• Another retrieval tool: youtube-transcript-api can retrieve supplied or automatic captions and format them as text or timestamped files. Its maintainer documents cloud-IP blocking, so a blocked request does not establish that captions are absent. Do not send me through repeated failed tools. The official YouTube caption-download API requires permission to edit the video and is not a general public-tutorial fallback.
• No usable captions: Look for the creator's transcript or written tutorial. If I can supply, or you can obtain through a permitted route, an audio/video file, transcribe its speech with an available tool. Whisper is one documented audio-file option; choose a tool you can actually use. Tell me the smallest missing input if no route works, and wait for it before claiming to reconstruct the tutorial.

Keep the video URL, caption language/type and timestamps. Clean repeated caption fragments without silently changing the meaning. Preserve exact product names, settings and code; check unclear passages against other available source material.

Reconstruct the steps, including what was shown

Work through the whole relevant tutorial and its linked supporting material. Identify its intended outcome, required tools/accounts/files, setup, sequence, important choices, examples and final demonstration. For a long tutorial, divide it into timestamped sections, extract each section's steps, then reconcile them in order. Retain a coverage note so a missing section cannot disappear in the summary. A straightforward tutorial normally needs one careful pass and a verification pass, not an agent team.

Look especially for spoken references such as “click here” or “use this setting” whose meaning depends on the screen. Inspect accessible video frames or the creator's linked code/files. If needed, ask me for a screenshot at a specific timestamp. Mark unresolved visual details precisely; do not invent button labels, commands or settings from speech alone.

If I have identified a project or desired use, inspect the relevant accessible project files, documentation and any supplied email/chat discussion of its requirements to understand how the tutorial fits. A generic tutorial conversion does not need a search through unrelated company correspondence. Ask one focused question only when a missing choice would materially change the instructions. Otherwise give the faithful guide using the demonstrated setup and identify what would need adapting.

Check current primary product documentation where a demonstrated interface, command or feature appears outdated or differs from my known setup. Label those corrections or adaptations separately from what the presenter actually did, with links and the date checked. Keep uncertainties visible at the step they affect.

Deliver a guide I can follow without replaying the whole video

Begin with the useful outcome in a sentence and a short list of what I need before starting. Then give numbered steps in plain language. Each step should specify the action, the relevant setting or input, and what I should see or have when it succeeds. Include concise commands or examples where needed, and timestamps linking back to the source for the important steps. Distinguish necessary steps from optional enhancements.

End with a short way to check the finished result and the exact unresolved details, if any. Make the guide readable in this chat and offer a downloadable or copyable version when available. If missing source material prevents an executable guide, label the output partial and show which missing input would complete it.

Before delivery, compare the guide with the inspected source sections: prerequisites present, dependencies in order, no skipped settings, no unsupported visual details, and no product updates passed off as the presenter's words. Fix omissions you can resolve. Explain source coverage briefly without making the reader wade through your research process.

Once the guide is delivered, offer to implement it or walk me through it. If I choose implementation, establish the desired result and inspect my actual environment, agree any consequential unresolved choices, carry out the authorized work and verify it against the guide's success check. The guide is already a useful completed result; implementation is a separate choice.

Done when

You have a usable step-by-step guide grounded in the tutorial, with prerequisites, source timestamps and a check for success. Any inaccessible or ambiguous step is identified explicitly; a partial guide remains partial until the necessary source detail is supplied.

Research & resources

Read the supporting research. Download research as Markdown.

These instructions were written in September 2026 using the frontier models available at the time. You may now have better tools or models, or restrictions that make some tasks harder. Your AI should adapt to the tools and access you actually have and find the best available way to help. Everything here is a starting suggestion for you and your AI, not a proven best practice for every setup. Feel free to rewrite any of it to better meet your needs.