YouTube Transcript to Newsletter & Social Posts (OpenAI) in n8n

Turn any YouTube video into a ready-to-publish newsletter + social posts—automatically in n8n

This n8n workflow converts a YouTube URL (or a provided transcript) into a complete newsletter issue plus repurposed X/Twitter and LinkedIn content using OpenAI—returning everything as structured JSON (including a Markdown newsletter) via a webhook.

What this workflow does

• Accepts a POST webhook request with either a url (YouTube video URL) or a transcript in the request body.
• Extracts and validates the YouTube video ID from the provided URL.
• Fetches the transcript from youtubetranscript.com, or uses the transcript sent in the payload when available.
• Sends the transcript to OpenAI Chat Completions with instructions to produce structured output for a newsletter and repurposed social content.
• Parses and normalizes the OpenAI response into fields such as subject line, main sections, key takeaways, an X/Twitter thread, and a LinkedIn post.
• Generates a Markdown newsletter version.
• Returns all deliverables as JSON to the webhook caller.

Use cases

• Repurpose your YouTube content into a consistent newsletter and social cadence for X/Twitter and LinkedIn.
• Build a content pipeline where SaaS operators submit video URLs and receive ready-to-publish draft assets as JSON.
• Use webhook-driven automation to turn long-form talks into structured summaries for campaigns.

Technical details

• Nodes/stack: Code, Webhook, HTTP Request, Respond to Webhook.
• External services: OpenAI (Chat Completions) and transcript retrieval via youtubetranscript.com.
• Setup requirement: replace the OpenAI HTTP header Authorization: Bearer YOUR_OPENAI_API_KEY in the OpenAI request.
• Optional config: set a fallback transcript endpoint URL in the transcript-fetching code.

Ideal for n8n automation engineers and SaaS operators who want a reliable YouTube transcript to newsletter workflow with JSON outputs and a Markdown newsletter draft.