tbpn - SKILL.md Agent Skill

name: tbpn description: >- Weekly newspaper-style summary of TBPN (Technology Business Programming Network) episodes. Use when the user asks for a TBPN summary, weekly tech news roundup, or says "tbpn summary", "tbpn newspaper", "what happened on tbpn this week", "pull the last N tbpn episodes". Also suitable for cron/scheduled end-of-week summaries. license: MIT compatibility: Requires yt-dlp and a PO Token server (bgutil-ytdlp-pot-provider) for YouTube transcript downloads. Works with any agent that can run shell commands and fetch URLs. metadata: author: junaidrahim version: "1.0"

TBPN Weekly Summary

Generate a newspaper-style summary of TBPN episodes and save it as Markdown.

Configuration

Before first use, set these paths for your environment. Agents should check for a tbpn.config.json in this skill's directory. If it doesn't exist, use sensible defaults or ask the user.

{
  "ytDlp": "yt-dlp",
  "potServerDir": "~/bgutil-ytdlp-pot-provider/server",
  "outputDir": "./output",
  "tempDir": "/tmp"
}

ytDlp — path to the yt-dlp binary (default: yt-dlp on PATH)
potServerDir — path to the bgutil PO Token server directory
outputDir — where to save generated summaries (e.g. an Obsidian vault folder like ~/vault/TBPN/)
tempDir — where to store temporary transcript files

Feeds

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UC-DRzaGnL_vtBUpCFH5M0tg
Newsletter (Substack): https://tbpn.substack.com/feed

Workflow

1. Fetch episodes

Pull the YouTube RSS feed
Filter for full episodes (skip Shorts — URLs containing /shorts/)
By default, get episodes from the current week (Monday–Friday)
The user may also request a specific number of recent episodes

2. Get transcripts

Start the PO Token server: cd <potServerDir> && node build/main.js &

For each episode, download the auto-generated transcript:

<ytDlp> --write-auto-sub --skip-download --sub-lang en -o '<tempDir>/tbpn-%(id)s' 'VIDEO_URL'

The bgutil plugin auto-provides tokens when the server is running on port 4416
Clean transcripts: strip VTT headers, timestamps, positioning tags, and deduplicate consecutive identical lines
Kill the PO Token server when done
If transcripts aren't available, fall back to episode descriptions from the RSS feed

3. Generate the summary

Read all transcripts and produce a structured summary:

Headline — the single biggest story
Top Stories — 3-5 major topics, each with a 2-3 sentence summary
Interviews & Guests — notable guests and key takeaways
Hot Takes — spicy opinions from John or Jordi worth noting
Quick Hits — bullet list of smaller stories mentioned
Links — relevant links mentioned on the show

Tone: informative, slightly casual, like a tech-savvy friend summarising the week. Aim for 500-800 words total.

4. Save the summary

Save to <outputDir>/YYYY-WNN.md (e.g. 2026-W14.md). Create the output directory if it doesn't exist.

Use the template in references/TEMPLATE.md.

5. Generate PDF (optional)

If the user requests a PDF export, convert the Markdown summary to PDF with a design language inspired by The Wall Street Journal:

Fonts: Use a serif font for body text (e.g. Georgia, Times New Roman) and a bold serif for headlines
Layout: Single-column, clean and typographically dense
Margins: 1 inch (72pt) on all sides — top, bottom, left, right. This is non-negotiable for readability
Headline: Large, bold, uppercase or small-caps for the main headline
Section headers: Bold, slightly larger than body, with a thin horizontal rule beneath
Body text: 11pt, 1.4 line-height
Color: Black and white only, no color accents
Footer: "TBPN Weekly Summary — Week NN, YYYY" centered at the bottom of each page

Use Pandoc with a custom LaTeX template, or generate HTML styled with the above rules and convert to PDF via wkhtmltopdf or a headless browser. Ensure the --margin-top, --margin-bottom, --margin-left, and --margin-right flags are set to 25mm (≈1 inch) if using wkhtmltopdf.

Save the PDF alongside the Markdown file as <outputDir>/YYYY-WNN.pdf.

6. Notify the user

After saving, let the user know: "TBPN weekly summary for Week NN is ready."

Notes

TBPN streams weekdays 11 AM–2 PM PT (John Coogan & Jordi Hays)
Show was acquired by OpenAI in April 2026
If no episodes aired in a given week, skip and note it
The Substack feed can supplement YouTube when transcripts are unavailable