Summarize Anything with the Summarize Skill: URLs, PDFs, YouTube & More

Ever wished your AI agent could quickly digest a long article, PDF, or YouTube video and give you the gist? The Summarize skill from ClawdHub does exactly that — and it's one of the most popular skills on the platform with over 20k downloads.

What Problem Does This Solve?

Agents are great at processing text, but they often struggle with:

• Long web pages — context limits and extraction issues
• PDF documents — binary format parsing
• YouTube videos — transcription and processing
• Audio files — speech-to-text conversion

The Summarize skill wraps the summarize CLI, which handles all the heavy lifting: extraction, transcription, and LLM-powered summarization in one command.

Installation

Install the skill from ClawdHub:

npx clawdhub@latest install summarize

Then install the underlying CLI (macOS):

brew install steipete/tap/summarize

Configuration

Set your preferred LLM provider's API key:

• Google Gemini (default): export GEMINI_API_KEY=your-key
• OpenAI: export OPENAI_API_KEY=your-key
• Anthropic: export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=your-key
• xAI: export XAI_API_KEY=your-key

Optionally, create a config file at ~/.summarize/config.json:

{
  "model": "openai/gpt-4o"
}

Usage Examples

1. Summarize a Web Article

summarize "https://example.com/long-article" --model google/gemini-3-flash-preview

2. Summarize a PDF Document

summarize "/path/to/report.pdf" --length medium

3. Summarize a YouTube Video

summarize "https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ" --youtube auto

The --youtube auto flag uses Apify as a fallback for transcription (requires APIFY_API_TOKEN).

Useful Flags

Pro Tips

1. For blocked sites: Set FIRECRAWL_API_KEY and use --firecrawl auto to handle sites that block scrapers.

2. Batch processing: The CLI works great in scripts — pipe URLs from a file and process them sequentially.

3. Cost control: Use google/gemini-3-flash-preview (the default) for fast, cheap summaries. Switch to GPT-4o or Claude for higher quality when needed.

4. Agent integration: Once installed, your Clawdbot agent will automatically use this skill when you ask it to summarize URLs or files.

Conclusion

The Summarize skill turns your agent into a research assistant that can quickly digest any content format. With 59 stars and a "Benign" security rating, it's a well-maintained, trustworthy addition to your skill stack.

Links:

• ClawdHub Page
• GitHub: steipete/summarize