How kf-cli Captures Knowledge from YouTube, GitHub and the Web into Your Obsidian Vault

The Problem: Knowledge Lives Everywhere

You watch a YouTube tutorial. You discover a GitHub repo. You read a blog post. Each one contains something worth keeping — but getting it into your knowledge base means copy-pasting, reformatting, tagging, and filing. Manually. Every time.

kf-cli solves this. It captures structured knowledge from any source and drops it directly into your Obsidian vault — formatted, tagged, and ready to link.

What kf-cli Is

kf-cli is a Claude Code plugin that replaces the older Docker/MCP-based kf-claude with native CLI tools. No containers, no MCP overhead — just yt-dlp, gh, curl, and Claude doing the heavy lifting.

It runs entirely inside Claude Code via slash commands:

/kf-cli:capture    — smart router, detects input type automatically
/kf-cli:youtube-note  — YouTube video with full transcript
/kf-cli:gitingest     — GitHub repo analysis
/kf-cli:study-guide   — web article → structured study guide
/kf-cli:idea          — quick idea capture
/kf-cli:article       — long-form article with AI hero image

How Each Capture Works

YouTube Videos → /kf-cli:youtube-note

Drop in a YouTube URL. kf-cli:

  1. Fetches video metadata via yt-dlp (title, channel, duration, thumbnail)
  2. Pulls the full transcript via uvx youtube-transcript-api
  3. Sends transcript to Claude for analysis — learning objectives, key insights, actionable points
  4. Writes a structured note with proper frontmatter tags

The resulting note includes the thumbnail, a curriculum outline, main insights, and suggested related searches — all in under 30 seconds.

GitHub Repos → /kf-cli:gitingest

Drop in a GitHub URL. kf-cli:

  1. Fetches repo metadata via gh api (stars, language, description, commits)
  2. Pulls the file tree and README
  3. Claude analyses the architecture and key files
  4. Writes a repository analysis note with tech stack, key files, and semantic search suggestions

Web Articles → /kf-cli:study-guide

Drop in any URL. kf-cli:

  1. Fetches the page via WebFetch
  2. Claude extracts the core concepts and structures them as a study guide
  3. Writes a note with key takeaways, quiz questions, and further reading

Smart Routing → /kf-cli:capture

Don’t want to think about which command to use? /kf-cli:capture detects the input type automatically:

Input Routes to
youtube.com/watch?v=... youtube-note
github.com/owner/repo gitingest
Any other URL study-guide
Plain text idea

Where Notes Go

Every captured note lands in notes/YYYY-MM-DD-slug.md with:

  • Frontmatter tags mapped to wiki topics (kf, claude-code, obsidian, etc.)
  • Wikilinks to related notes
  • Canonical topic tags that route it to the correct wiki/[topic]/ file

The wiki is rebuilt with python3 scripts/compile_wiki.py — which reads all frontmatter tags and regenerates the topic indexes automatically.

Why Native CLI vs Docker/MCP

  kf-claude (old) kf-cli (new)
File access MCP Docker tool Direct Write(*)
YouTube MCP tool yt-dlp
GitHub MCP GitHub tools gh api
Web fetch firecrawl_scrape WebFetch
Cold start 2-5s Docker 0s
Speed ~500ms per op ~1ms local I/O

Key Takeaways

  • kf-cli turns any URL or idea into a structured Obsidian note in seconds
  • Smart routing via /kf-cli:capture means you never choose the wrong command
  • All notes use canonical frontmatter tags — no body hashtags, no routing failures
  • Native CLI tools make it 100-500x faster than the Docker-based predecessor
  • Publish any note instantly to GitHub Pages with /kf-cli:publish

Created: 2026-04-13