n8n YouTube Summarizer → Obsidian Notes with LLM & Webhooks

Turn any YouTube video into an Obsidian note automatically

This n8n workflow takes a YouTube URL from an n8n form, fetches the video transcript, summarizes it with an LLM into a clean Markdown digest, and saves the result directly into your Obsidian vault via Obsidian Local REST API—with an optional webhook notification.

What this workflow does

• Receives a YouTube URL submitted through an n8n form trigger.
• Fetches the transcript by sending the URL to a transcript service API (configured via TRANSCRIPT_SERVICE_URL).
• Generates a Markdown summary using an LLM chat completions endpoint. The transcript is truncated to 12,000 characters and the prompt requests a short digest with:
  • a title
  • key points
  • a takeaway
• Extracts the note title from the first Markdown heading and preserves the full generated content.
• Writes to Obsidian by posting the Markdown note to the Obsidian Local REST API into the Inbox folder, using a filename derived from the cleaned title.
• Optionally notifies a webhook (configured via NOTIFY_WEBHOOK_URL) when a new note is added.

Use cases

• Content teams: convert YouTube training, webinars, or product videos into Obsidian knowledge notes.
• Automation engineers: maintain a searchable vault of learnings from technical channels.
• SaaS operators: capture key takeaways from customer-facing demos and internal announcements.

Technical details

• n8n nodes: form trigger, http request, code
• LLM configuration: LLM_URL, LLM_MODEL, LLM_API_KEY (chat completions API)
• Transcript service: TRANSCRIPT_SERVICE_URL
• Obsidian integration: OBSIDIAN_API_URL, OBSIDIAN_API_KEY, writes to Inbox using Obsidian Local REST API
• Optional webhook: NOTIFY_WEBHOOK_URL