n8n YouTube to Notion Workflow: OpenAI Repurpose + Thumbnail

Turn any YouTube video into Notion-ready content—automatically

This n8n workflow takes a YouTube URL via webhook, pulls the video transcript, uses OpenAI to repurpose the content into multiple formats, generates a 1024×1024 thumbnail image, uploads it to Google Drive, and saves everything (including the public thumbnail link) as a new page in your Notion database.

What this workflow does

• Receives a POST webhook with a YouTube video URL.
• Extracts the YouTube video ID, then uses the YouTube API to fetch video metadata.
• Retrieves the transcript via Apify, then cleans and normalizes the transcript text (e.g., removing HTML entities and extra whitespace).
• Uses OpenAI to generate repurposed content in JSON format, including a LinkedIn post, Twitter/X thread, blog draft, and YouTube description.
• Generates a thumbnail with OpenAI based on the video title and transcript, producing a 1024×1024 image.
• Uploads the thumbnail to Google Drive, shares it publicly, and prepares the public URL.
• Saves the results to Notion with a new database page containing the video title, video URL, transcript excerpt, AI outputs, a timestamp, and the thumbnail URL.

Use cases

• SaaS teams repurposing weekly YouTube updates into LinkedIn, X, and blog drafts—stored in Notion for review.
• Automation engineers building a repeatable YouTube-to-content pipeline using n8n webhooks.
• Content operators capturing transcripts and maintaining a searchable Notion library of AI-generated assets.

Technical details

• Webhook trigger to accept YouTube URLs (POST request).
• Integrations: YouTube, Apify (transcript), OpenAI (text + thumbnail prompt generation), Google Drive (public thumbnail upload), Notion (database page creation).
• Workflow components include set, code, notion, webhook, you tube, and supporting steps (e.g., sticky note) for clarity.

Setup requirements: connect credentials for YouTube, Apify, OpenAI, Google Drive, and Notion; create a Notion database with fields for the workflow outputs; select the database ID; and choose the Google Drive folder.