YouTube channel monitor with Gemini AI transcription & summarization

This n8n workflow monitors YouTube channels 24/7, transcribes new videos with AI, and scores them by relevance—all automatically saved to Google Sheets.

About

This n8n workflow automatically monitors YouTube channels, transcribes new videos, and generates AI-powered summaries with relevance scoring. It pulls channel URLs from a Google Sheet, fetches recent videos (last 14 days), transcribes them using Google Gemini, and saves detailed summaries back to your spreadsheet with relevance scores based on custom criteria.

How It Works

1. Schedule Trigger: Runs weekly (every 7 days at 7:05 AM)
2. Fetch Channels: Reads channel URLs and filter criteria from Google Sheets
3. Process Channels: Loops through each channel and fetches recent videos via YouTube RSS feeds
4. Filter Videos: Only processes videos from the last 14 days that don't already exist in the database
5. Transcribe: Uses Google Gemini API to transcribe video content
6. Summarize & Score: AI agent analyzes transcripts against your criteria and generates:
   • Full 500-word summary in markdown
   • Short bullet-point summary
   • Topic classification
   • Relevance score (1-10)
   • Relevance reasoning
7. Save Results: Appends or updates video data in Google Sheets

Setup Instructions

Prerequisites

• n8n instance (cloud or self-hosted)
• Google account with Sheets API access
• Google Gemini API key

Step 1: Google Sheets Setup

Create a new Google Spreadsheet with two sheets:

Google Sheet Template: Click here to access

• Make a copy to your Google Drive
• Configure the two sheets as described below

Sheet 1: "channels"

• Column A: category (e.g., "AI Tools", "Marketing")
• Column B: channels (comma-separated YouTube channel URLs)
• Column C: video filter criteria (describe what makes videos relevant)

Sheet 2: "videos"

• Columns: id, title, video url, date, channel, category, topic, summary, short sumary, transcript, relevance score, relevance reason

Step 2: Configure n8n Workflow

1. Import the workflow JSON into n8n
2. Google Sheets Authentication:
   • Connect your Google account in both "Get row(s) in sheet" nodes
   • Update the document ID to match your spreadsheet
3. Gemini API Key:
   • In the "set channel" node, replace the placeholder API key with your own Gemini API key
   • Get your key from: https://makersuite.google.com/app/apikey

Step 3: Adjust Settings (Optional)

• Video lookback period: Edit line 6 in "Videos Posted in Last X days" node (default: 14 days)
• Videos per channel: Modify the "Limit" node (default: 4 videos)
• Schedule: Change the "Schedule Trigger5" node timing as needed
• Wait times: Adjust wait nodes to respect API rate limits

Step 4: Test & Activate

1. Add a test channel URL to your "channels" sheet
2. Run the workflow manually to verify it works
3. Activate the workflow to run on schedule

Notes

• The workflow includes rate limiting (wait nodes) to avoid API throttling
• Videos are checked for duplicates before processing
• Failed transcriptions continue to the next video without stopping the workflow
• Results are automatically saved to Google Sheets after each video processes