GitHub – steipete/summarize: Point at any URL/YouTube/Podcast or file. Get the gist. CLI and Chrome Extension.

If you’ve ever stared at a long article, a two hour podcast, or a YouTube talk and thought, *I just need the essence*, you’re not alone. Most of us don’t lack curiosity, we lack time. That’s where **Summarize**, an open source project by steipete, quietly fits into everyday life.

At its core, Summarize lets you point at almost anything, a URL, a local file, a YouTube video, even a podcast feed, and get a clean, readable summary back. No fuss. No ceremony. You can run it straight from the terminal, or use it through a **Chrome Side Panel** or **Firefox Sidebar** if you’re more of a browser person. One click, and you’re reading the gist instead of scrubbing a timeline.

What makes this project interesting is how it grew out of real usage. The upcoming 0.10.0 preview leans into speed and flexibility. There’s a local daemon that streams Markdown summaries to the browser, but if you only want the CLI, you can skip that part entirely. I appreciate that kind of choice, because sometimes you want a full setup, and sometimes you just want something that works right now.

It handles YouTube surprisingly well, including transcripts and even slide screenshots when you want them. Podcasts too, pulling and transcribing the latest episode from RSS feeds, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify (best effort, as exclusives can be tricky). Under the hood it prefers local tools like whisper.cpp for transcription when available, which feels practical and respectful of your machine.

There are a few constraints worth knowing. It requires **Node 22+** and currently runs on **Apple Silicon (arm64)** only. So yes, it’s opinionated. But it’s also honest about it.

If you’re the kind of person who reads, listens, and watches more than time allows, this project is worth exploring. You can find it here, take a look at the README, and see if it fits into your flow:
https://github.com/steipete/summarize

Tools like this don’t replace curiosity. They protect it. And that feels like a good direction to be heading.