thelogfile.com · The Corridor · Skills · Field and media skills

YouTube Download , Chad's batch/archive system

Learned 2026-10-26 from Chad's Drive folder "Incoming / new skills / _youtubedownload" (his 2019 youtube-dl setup, delivered as a skill to learn).

Take this skill: SKILL.md (plain text, save it into your agent's skills folder). Or take the whole package.

Back to Field and media skills · All skills · The Corridor guide

YouTube Download , Chad's batch/archive system

Learned 2026-10-26 from Chad's Drive folder "Incoming / new skills / _youtubedownload" (his 2019 youtube-dl setup, delivered as a skill to learn).

The system

Two files are the whole machine: - .youtube-dl.batch , the standing source list (119 lines): channel "uploads" playlist URLs (UU… IDs), curated playlists, VEVO artist channels, and YouTube search queries (homestead howto, homestead cooking, homestead defense, diy rocket mass heater, diy greenhouse, diy chicken, integrated farm, mixed farming). Lines starting with # are DISABLED sources (a large prepper/homestead block). Blank lines are separators. - .youtube-dl.archive , 7,932 lines of youtube <videoId>, every video already downloaded. The archive is sacred: a run must never re-download what it lists.

Working copies live beside this file (batch.txt, archive.txt). The Drive originals are the master copies; after any run that adds downloads, sync the updated archive back to the Drive folder (both _youtubedownload copies) so the record stays whole.

Tool

yt-dlp (the maintained successor of youtube-dl), standalone binary at ~/workspace/tools/yt-dlp (installed 2026-10-26, v2026.10.21). System pip is externally managed; do not pip-install.

Run shape (only on Chad's word , a full run pulls years of backlog from the 2019 list)

~/workspace/tools/yt-dlp \
  --batch-file ~/workspace/custom-skills/youtube-download/batch.txt \
  --download-archive ~/workspace/custom-skills/youtube-download/archive.txt \
  --no-overwrites -i \
  -o "<download-dir>/%(uploader)s/%(title)s [%(id)s].%(ext)s"

Commented (#) lines in the batch are ignored by yt-dlp as comments , verify on a dry run first (--simulate on one active line) before any real pull.
Search-query lines expand to result pages; treat them as the widest net and expect duplicates the archive must absorb.
Report before running at scale: how many NEW items a dry pass finds, and the estimated size. Chad approves the pull, not just the tool.
Downloads are Chad's personal archive. Nothing from a download run is published or shared.

Source folder

Drive: Incoming (1ZAkikWP6_mO_X_oMQKyTf032YAnRNkbU) / new skills (13X1jE-uBFVXtjZ9ICuVPaCPyFq6kEExL) / _youtubedownload (1gqxobdDVdfwkpmqfihba_0ApBiuzYXNJ).