name: lai-summarize
description: Summarize a transcript, podcast, or long caption file into structured markdown (TL;DR, chapters with timestamps, quotes, entities). Primary path uses this session's LLM directly — no API key, no model config. Trigger on "summarize", "生成摘要", "总结", "TL;DR", "episode summary", "what was discussed", or when the user has a long caption and wants key points. CLI lai summarize caption is the secondary path for oversized transcripts / headless runs.
Content Summarizer
Preferred model: Claude Sonnet (cost-efficient for this agent-driven workload). This skill runs on whatever model is active in the parent session — any Claude model works; no hard switch.
This skill summarizes using the agent's own LLM capability — the model you are running right now. It does not call out to any external LLM service by default. Helper scripts turn the source into an agent-ready prompt and validate the finished summary, so the agent only has to write prose.
Primary path (agent-driven, default): prepare.py → agent writes summary.md → validate.py.
Secondary path: lai summarize caption (CLI with its own LLM backend) — only when the transcript is too large for the agent's context, or there is no agent in the loop.
Inputs
Any caption format supported by lattifai-captions (SRT, VTT, ASS, JSON, Gemini markdown, plain text, …).
Optional meta.md beside the source enriches the summary. If meta.md defines chapters:, those titles and timestamps are hard constraints — no merge, split, rename, or reorder.
meta.md must wrap its YAML in --- frontmatter delimiters; otherwise validate.py can't parse it and hard constraints are silently skipped (with a warning on stderr). Minimal template:
---
title: "Episode Title"
chapters:
- { title: "Intro", start: 0.0, end: 60.0 }
- { title: "Main Topic", start: 60.0, end: 420.0 }
---
Free-form notes below the frontmatter are fine.
Primary Path (agent-driven)
Parameters (agent choices)
<source>— caption/transcript file--output <path>— default<source>.summary.md--meta <path>— episode metadata (auto-detected beside source)--lang <code>— summary language (default: source language)- length —
short/medium/long≈ 200–400 / 500–1000 / 1000–2000 words (defaultmedium)
Workflow
<base> = source media stem (e.g. podcast from podcast.mp3) or YouTube ID. Files all land in the current directory:
# 1. Build an agent-ready prompt input from the source + meta.md
python skills/lai-summarize/scripts/prepare.py podcast.aligned.json -o podcast.prompt_input.md
# 2. Agent reads <base>.prompt_input.md and writes <base>.summary.md per the schema below.
# 3. Validate frontmatter, chapters, and verbatim quotes
python skills/lai-summarize/scripts/validate.py podcast.aligned.json podcast.summary.md
prepare.py produces a transcript with [MM:SS] timestamps and speaker labels, plus a # Meta block that marks meta.md chapters as HARD CONSTRAINT when present.
Output Schema
---
title: "Episode Title"
seo_title: "SEO title (≤60 chars)"
seo_description: "One-sentence description (≤160 chars)"
tags: ["tag1", "tag2"] # 4–8 tags
chapters:
- { title: "Chapter Title", start: 10.0, end: 52.0 }
confidence: 0.85 # 0.0–1.0 self-assessment
source_quality: high # high | medium | low
---
TL;DR paragraph (2–4 sentences, active voice).
## [00:10] Chapter Title
Summary paragraph(s).
> *"Verbatim quote, ≤40 words."*
## Entities
- **Name** (Person|Concept|Organization): one-line context
What validate.py checks
- Frontmatter is valid YAML with all required fields
seo_title≤ 60,seo_description≤ 160tags: 4–8 entrieschapters: 1–8, each with title/start/end, start < end- Hard constraint: chapter titles + timestamps match
meta.mdverbatim when present - Body
## [MM:SS] Titleheaders match frontmatter chapters 1:1 in order - Every
> *"quote"*appears verbatim in source transcript text confidence∈ [0, 1];source_quality∈ {high, medium, low}
Requires pyyaml (stdlib argparse / re otherwise).
Secondary Path (CLI)
The CLI takes two positional args (input, output); there is no -o:
lai summarize caption podcast.aligned.json podcast.summary.md
Configure an LLM backend once (required for this path only):
lai config set summarization.llm.model_name gemini-3-flash-preview
# Gemini key: see /lai-transcribe
# Or OpenAI-compatible:
lai config set summarization.llm.model_name gpt-4o
lai config set OPENAI_API_KEY <your-key>
CLI options: summarization.lang=zh, summarization.length=short, summarization.output_format=json, meta=video.meta.md.
Common Issues
| Problem | Fix |
|---|---|
validate.py flags quote not in source |
Quote must be verbatim — rewrite or pick another line |
| Chapter count / timestamp drift from meta.md | Hard constraint — use meta.md values exactly |
| Transcript too large for the agent | Fall back to CLI (secondary path) |
meta.md chapters malformed |
Remove from meta.md and let the agent generate chapters |
Related Skills
/lai-transcribe— produce the transcript first/lai-align— precise timestamps feed chapter boundaries/lai-diarize— speaker labels enable speaker-aware summaries/lai-translate— translate the summary