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Daily

Summarise new videos in a playlist every day

Each day, new videos added to a playlist you follow are summarised in a sheet, and you get a short email with the list.

Runs
Daily
Apps
Google Sheets, YouTube
AI
Yes, uses the built-in AI allowance
Access
YouTube API key; Sheets edit

Send this to your assistant

Create a ClickRuntime automation: every morning, check my Research playlist for videos I haven't logged yet. Summarise each one with AI from its description, add it to my Watch Log sheet and email me the list.

Paste it into your assistant. It tells you what it will send or change before it runs live.

First time? Adding ClickRuntime to your assistant takes about two minutes.

Why use it

Why teams use this automation

A marketing lead follows a dozen industry channels and saves interesting talks to a playlist to watch later. Later rarely comes. The playlist grows to sixty videos and nobody on the team knows which ones are worth an hour.

A short summary of each new video, kept in a shared sheet, lets the team decide what to watch and gives them a searchable log of everything they have saved.

What you get out of it

  • Decide what is worth watching

    A few lines on each video show whether it is worth the hour before anyone presses play.

  • A shared research log

    The whole team can search the sheet for a topic and find the right talk months later.

  • Nothing is logged twice

    Videos already in the sheet are skipped, so the log stays clean.

  • A daily nudge

    The morning email lists what was added, which keeps the playlist from becoming a graveyard.

How it works

What happens, step by step

  1. Every morning, ClickRuntime lists the videos in the playlist you chose.

  2. It checks your Watch Log sheet and skips any video already listed there.

  3. For each new video, AI writes a short summary from its title and description.

  4. Each video is added to the sheet with its link and summary, and you get an email listing them.

Before it runs live

  • Connect your Google Sheets account and pick the spreadsheets it may use
  • Connect YouTube

What you get

RunsDaily
Summarise new videos in a playlist every daytoday, 9:00Succeeded
Email · Watch logPricing pages that convert (Acme Growth Talks): three page layouts compared, with before-and-after sign-up rates. https://youtu.be/xY12abC34de

Build your own

Need it to work differently?

This template is a starting point. Copy the prompt and change it, or describe a different automation from scratch, with your own conditions, more apps or an AI step. Your assistant writes it, tests it and runs it on ClickRuntime.
  • Your own rules

    Conditions, thresholds, filters and exceptions, written the way you'd explain them to a colleague.

  • Any number of apps

    One automation can read from one app and update several others. Over 248 apps are ready, and anything with an API works too.

  • AI where it helps

    Summaries, classification, extraction and drafts use ClickRuntime's built-in AI, with no extra key.

  • On a schedule or on each event

    Runs as often as every 5 minutes, or the moment an app sends an event, and keeps track of what it already handled.

Changes you can ask for

  • Run it at a different time, more or less often, or only on weekdays
  • Change what the AI looks for, or how it writes the result
  • Add another app, for example also send it to Slack
  • Combine it with other Google Sheets and YouTube steps into one automation

Under the hood

The code that runs this automation

This is the Python script that runs each time the automation starts. Your AI assistant writes it for you when you send the prompt, and you allow each step in your assistant. To change how the automation works, describe the change to your assistant and it updates the script for you. For every function it can use, see the script reference.
daily_summaries_of_videos_in_a_playlist.pyexample
from google.oauth2.credentials import Credentials
from googleapiclient.discovery import build
from clickruntime import on_trigger, http, credentials, ai, notify

YT = "https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3"

def yt(path, **params):
    return http.get(f"{YT}/{path}", params={**params, "key": credentials.secret("YOUTUBE_API_KEY")}).json().get("items", [])

def api(name, version):
    return build(name, version, credentials=Credentials(credentials.connection("google", "work")), cache_discovery=False)

SHEET_ID, PLAYLIST = "your-spreadsheet-id", "PLxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"

@on_trigger
def run(event):
    sheet = api("sheets", "v4").spreadsheets().values()
    logged = {r[0] for r in sheet.get(spreadsheetId=SHEET_ID, range="Watch Log!A2:A").execute().get("values", []) if r}
    ids = [i["contentDetails"]["videoId"] for i in yt("playlistItems", part="contentDetails", playlistId=PLAYLIST, maxResults=50)]
    new = [i for i in ids if i not in logged]
    if not new:
        return {"logged": 0}
    rows = []
    for v in yt("videos", part="snippet", id=",".join(new)):
        s = v["snippet"]
        summary = ai.generate(f"{s['title']}\n\n{s['description'][:3000]}", system="Summarise this video in 3 sentences for a busy marketer.",
                              max_output_tokens=150).text.strip()
        rows.append([v["id"], s["title"], s["channelTitle"], f"https://youtu.be/{v['id']}", summary])
    sheet.append(spreadsheetId=SHEET_ID, range="Watch Log!A:E", valueInputOption="RAW", body={"values": rows}).execute()
    notify.email_me(f"{len(rows)} new videos summarised", "\n\n".join(f"{r[1]} ({r[2]})\n{r[4]}\n{r[3]}" for r in rows))
    return {"logged": len(rows)}

FAQ

Common questions

Does it watch the whole video?
It summarises from the title and description, which works well for most talks and tutorials. For a fuller summary it can use a transcript service you connect.
Can it follow more than one playlist?
Yes. List several playlists or channels in the prompt and they all go into the same sheet.
What if nothing new was added?
It writes nothing and sends no email that day.
What permissions does it need?
YouTube API key; Sheets edit. Nothing else in your accounts is used.
Does it need AI?
Yes. It uses ClickRuntime's built-in AI, so you don't need an OpenAI or Anthropic key. Every plan includes a monthly AI allowance.
How many runs does it use?
One run each time it runs (daily). Checks that find nothing to do and stop right away aren't counted.
Can I change how it works?
Yes. Describe the change to your AI assistant, for example a different schedule, channel or filter. It updates the automation, tests it and tells you what changed.

Set up “Summarise new videos in a playlist every day” from your assistant

Copy the prompt above, or connect your assistant first. Free plan, no credit card.