Skip to content

On a schedule

Get summaries of new YouTube videos

When a channel you follow posts a video, you get five bullet points instead of watching it.

Runs
On a schedule
Apps
Google Gemini
AI
Not needed
Access
API key

Send this to your assistant

Create a ClickRuntime automation: every day, check these three YouTube channels for new videos. Have the Google Gemini API watch each new one and email me a 5-bullet summary with the link.

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 YouTube channels: competitors, industry conferences, tool vendors. Their videos are 20 to 90 minutes, and the useful part is often two minutes in the middle. She bookmarks a video to watch later, the bookmark list grows past fifty items, and she ends up learning about a feature launch from a customer instead of from the vendor's own announcement.

On the schedule you set, ClickRuntime checks the channels for videos it has not seen, remembers them, and passes each YouTube URL to Gemini as file data. Gemini returns the format you prefer, such as a summary, a quiz to test understanding or a draft blog post, and the result is emailed to you with the video link.

Students, researchers and content teams use the same setup for lectures, webinars and talks.

What you get out of it

  • Know what a video says before you watch

    A summary tells you whether a 70-minute talk is worth your hour. Most videos you can skip, and the few that matter get your full attention. The rest of the watch-later list can be dropped without guilt.

  • New videos are never missed

    Checking for new uploads on a schedule means a launch video from a competitor reaches you on the day it appears, instead of weeks later when someone mentions it in passing.

  • Turn watching into learning

    A quiz or a list of key points gives you something to test yourself against. Material from conference sessions sticks better when you answer questions than when you only skim a summary.

  • A first draft for content teams

    A blog post outline based on a talk saves the effort of transcribing and rewriting. Editors begin with structure and quotes, rather than a blank page and a recording to scrub through.

  • Each video handled once

    The list of videos already processed is kept, so you do not receive the same summary twice. Your inbox contains one email per new video, and the backlog never builds up again.

How it works

What happens, step by step

  1. Every day, ClickRuntime checks the YouTube channels you follow for new videos.

  2. It skips videos it has already summarised.

  3. Gemini watches each new video and summarises it in five bullet points.

  4. You get an email for each video with its title and the summary.

Before it runs live

  • Connect Google Gemini

What you get

RunsOn a schedule
Get summaries of new YouTube videostoday, 9:00Succeeded
Email · New videosNew video: Building agents with tool use • Shows how to define tools as JSON schemas

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

  • Act only on the items that match your own rules, and skip the rest
  • Add an AI step, for example to summarize, sort or draft a reply
  • Add another app, for example also send it to Slack
  • Combine it with other Google Gemini 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.
summarise_youtube_videos.pyexample
import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
from clickruntime import on_trigger, credentials, notify, http, state, report_fetched

def gemini(body, model="gemini-2.5-flash"):
    resp = http.post(f"https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/models/{model}:generateContent",
                     headers={"x-goog-api-key": credentials.secret("GEMINI_API_KEY")}, json=body, timeout=120)
    resp.raise_for_status()
    return resp.json()["candidates"][0]

CHANNELS = ["UC_x5XG1OV2P6uZZ5FSM9Ttw", "UCVHFbqXqoYvEWM1Ddxl0QDg", "UCsBjURrPoezykLs9EqgamOA"]
NS = {"a": "http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom", "yt": "http://www.youtube.com/xml/schemas/2015"}

@on_trigger
def run(event):
    seen = set(state.get("seen") or [])
    new = []
    for cid in CHANNELS:
        feed = ET.fromstring(http.get("https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml", params={"channel_id": cid}).content)
        for e in feed.findall("a:entry", NS):
            if e.findtext("yt:videoId", namespaces=NS) not in seen:
                new.append((e.findtext("yt:videoId", namespaces=NS), e.findtext("a:title", namespaces=NS)))
    report_fetched(len(new))
    if not new:
        return {"new": 0}
    for vid, title in new:
        url = f"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v={vid}"
        out = gemini({"contents": [{"parts": [{"file_data": {"file_uri": url}},
                                               {"text": "Summarise this video in 5 bullets."}]}]})
        notify.email_me(f"New video: {title}", out["content"]["parts"][0]["text"] + f"\n\n{url}")
        seen.add(vid)
    state.set("seen", sorted(seen))
    return {"new": len(new)}

FAQ

Common questions

Does it work for videos without captions?
Gemini can process the video content directly, including audio, so captions are not required. Quality is better when the speech is clear. Very long videos, or ones that are private, age-restricted or blocked, may not be processed.
Can I follow channels or playlists?
Yes. You can give a list of channels or playlists to watch, and each new video is picked up on the next run. You can also set keywords so that only videos with certain words in the title are summarized.
How accurate are the summaries?
They are usually good at main points, but details like numbers and names can be wrong. Because each email links to the video, you can jump to the section that matters and verify anything you plan to quote or act upon.
What permissions does it need?
API key. Nothing else in your accounts is used.
Does it need AI?
No. It runs without AI, so it doesn't use your plan's AI allowance.
How many runs does it use?
One run each time it checks. Checks that find nothing new 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 “Get summaries of new YouTube videos” from your assistant

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