podcast-goat

Podcast GOAT CLI

Pull long-form podcast transcripts as speaker-labeled markdown — cookie-first across the four major paid publishers, free everywhere else, paid only when nothing else works.

Built for agentic users who already pay for Huberman, Acquired, Founders, and Peter Attia and want to feed those transcripts into Claude or Hermes without copy-pasting. Walks a cookie -> free -> paid dispatch chain across 10 sources, normalizes everything to the same **Speaker** (MM:SS) markdown shape, caches to a local FTS5 store, and ships an MCP wrapper so agents can drive the whole thing.

Created by @mvanhorn (Matt Van Horn). Contributors: @tmchow (Trevin Chow).

Install

The recommended path installs both the podcast-goat-pp-cli binary and the pp-podcast-goat agent skill (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot, and other agents supported by the upstream skills CLI) in one shot:

npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library install podcast-goat

For CLI only (no skill):

npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library install podcast-goat --cli-only

For skill only — installs the skill into the same agents as the default command above, but skips the CLI binary (use this to update or reinstall just the skill):

npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library install podcast-goat --skill-only

To constrain the skill install to one or more specific agents (repeatable — agent names match the skills CLI):

npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library install podcast-goat --agent claude-code
npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library install podcast-goat --agent claude-code --agent codex

Without Node (Go fallback)

If npx isn't available (no Node, offline), install the CLI directly via Go (requires Go 1.26.4 or newer):

go install github.com/mvanhorn/printing-press-library/library/media-and-entertainment/podcast-goat/cmd/podcast-goat-pp-cli@latest

This installs the CLI only — no skill.

Pre-built binary

Download a pre-built binary for your platform from the latest release. On macOS, clear the Gatekeeper quarantine: xattr -d com.apple.quarantine <binary>. On Unix, mark it executable: chmod +x <binary>.

Install for Hermes

Install the CLI binary first. The installer writes binaries to a per-user managed bin directory by default: $HOME/.local/bin on macOS/Linux and %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\PrintingPress\bin on Windows.

npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library install podcast-goat --cli-only

Then install the focused Hermes skill.

From the Hermes CLI:

hermes skills install mvanhorn/printing-press-library/cli-skills/pp-podcast-goat --force

Inside a Hermes chat session:

/skills install mvanhorn/printing-press-library/cli-skills/pp-podcast-goat --force

Restart the Hermes session or gateway if the newly installed skill is not visible immediately.

Install for OpenClaw

Install both the CLI binary and the focused OpenClaw skill. The installer defaults binaries to a per-user bin directory ($HOME/.local/bin on macOS/Linux, %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\PrintingPress\bin on Windows):

npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library install podcast-goat --agent openclaw

Restart the OpenClaw session or gateway if the newly installed skill is not visible immediately.

Use with Claude Desktop

This CLI ships an MCPB bundle — Claude Desktop's standard format for one-click MCP extension installs (no JSON config required).

The bundle reuses your local browser session — set it up first if you haven't:

podcast-goat-pp-cli auth login-service

To install:

1. Download the .mcpb for your platform from the latest release.
2. Double-click the .mcpb file. Claude Desktop opens and walks you through the install.

Requires Claude Desktop 1.0.0 or later. Pre-built bundles ship for macOS Apple Silicon (darwin-arm64) and Windows (amd64, arm64); for other platforms, use the manual config below.

Manual JSON config (advanced)

If you can't use the MCPB bundle (older Claude Desktop, unsupported platform), install the MCP binary and configure it manually.

Install the MCP binary from this CLI's published public-library entry or pre-built release.

Add to your Claude Desktop config (~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "podcast-goat": {
      "command": "podcast-goat-pp-mcp"
    }
  }
}

Authentication

Three auth surfaces, in cost order. (1) auth login-service --service <huberman|acquired|founders|peterattia> extracts your logged-in Chrome cookie once and stores it locally — the headline workflow. (2) Free sources (Dwarkesh Substack, Podcasting 2.0 RSS transcripts, yt-dlp auto-subs) need no auth. (3) Paid sources (spoken.md SPOKEN_API_KEY, Taddy TADDY_API_KEY+TADDY_USER_ID, audio providers like ElevenLabs/OpenAI/Deepgram) are scoped to commands you explicitly opt into with --paid or --provider <name>. spoken.md's pt_demo key works without signup.

Quick Start

# Confirm yt-dlp present, RSS reachability, cookie freshness
podcast-goat-pp-cli doctor

# Free path; canonical markdown straight to cache
podcast-goat-pp-cli episode get https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/andrej-karpathy

# One-time cookie capture from your logged-in Chrome
podcast-goat-pp-cli auth login-service --service huberman

# Cookie path; free because you subscribe
podcast-goat-pp-cli episode get https://www.hubermanlab.com/episode/<your-premium-slug>

# Bundle cached transcripts into one prompt-shaped file
podcast-goat-pp-cli magic 'AI chip supply chain' --out chips.md

What works today vs. what's coming in v0.2

Working in v0.1 — verified live 2026-05-17:

• Spotify — auth login-service --service spotify captures sp_dc once; adapter then auto-bootstraps a fresh Bearer via Spotify's TOTP-signed token endpoint on every fetch (uses the secret version in internal/source/spotify/totp.go; v0.2 will refresh at install time). SPOTIFY_BEARER env var works as a manual override. Live-verified against "10 Years of Acquired (with Michael Lewis)" — 5083 lines / 202KB.
• Dwarkesh — direct HTML scrape, no auth.
• YouTube — yt-dlp subprocess; auto-downloads yt-dlp on first call to ~/.config/podcast-goat/bin/ if not on PATH (~35MB one-time). Speaker diarization is single-speaker per channel (yt-dlp auto-subs limitation).
• spoken.md — universal paid path; takes any URL, returns named-speaker markdown. Needs SPOKEN_API_KEY (or pt_demo for evaluation only).
• RSS Podcasting 2.0 — <podcast:transcript> tag MIME-routed; works for shows that advertise it (~1% of major podcasts).
• Taddy — GraphQL getEpisodeTranscript; needs TADDY_API_KEY + TADDY_USER_ID.

Deferred to v0.2 — each one ships a clean typed NotImplementedError today with a remediation hint pointing at the workaround:

• huberman / acquired / founders / peterattia HTML parsers — cookie capture and authenticated GET both work (auth login-service --service <name> writes ~/.config/podcast-goat/cookies/cookies-<service>.json, the adapter loads it and fires the authenticated request). The HTML-to-segment parser awaits first-time browser capture from a logged-in session to calibrate the per-publisher shape. Until then, most of these shows' free episodes are available via the Spotify path above.
• --bilingual zh-Hans,en aligner — the flag is wired but errors with a deferral message. v0.1 yt-dlp ships the English path; v0.2 adds Chinese + auto-translation.
• whisperapi audio extraction — provider switch (--provider-name elevenlabs|openai|deepgram) and key checks are live, but the yt-dlp audio extract → upload → diarize pipeline ships in v0.2. Use --provider spoken or --provider taddy for paid fallback today.
• Chrome App-Bound v10 cookie strip — Chrome 127+ App-Bound encryption requires a 32-byte host-prefix strip on the CDP path; lands in v0.2 alongside the cookie-tier HTML parsers that need it.
• Persisted Spotify bearer cache — the TOTP-bootstrapped bearer is cached in-memory for its ~1h TTL. Within one process (MCP server, scripted batch) the cache survives across fetches; across CLI invocations each episode get re-bootstraps (a few hundred ms). v0.2 adds on-disk persistence so even one-shot CLI calls hit a warm cache.

Unique Features

These capabilities aren't available in any other tool for this API.

Cross-source corpus that compounds

• magic — Bundle top-N cached transcripts about a topic into one markdown file an agent can summarize in a single call.

  Replaces the chip-supply-chain.fly.dev copy-paste workflow with one command. Reach for this when the agent needs cross-episode synthesis.

  podcast-goat-pp-cli magic 'AI chip supply chain' --out ~/chip-supply-chain.md

• episode get --explain — Dry-run shows which source tier will fire and why earlier tiers were skipped, with projected cost before any paid call.

  Lets agents preview cost and source attribution before committing. Reach for this before any paid run.

  podcast-goat-pp-cli episode get https://www.hubermanlab.com/episode/example --explain

• episode quote — FTS5 phrase search returns the matched segment plus N surrounding segments preserving the canonical speaker shape and deeplink timestamp.

  Grep your podcast memory in 5 seconds. Reach for this when you remember a half-citation and need the exact line back.

  podcast-goat-pp-cli episode quote 'pricing power' -C 3 --json

• source compare — For an episode resolvable on multiple sources, fetch all available adapters and diff segment count, token count, distinct speakers, label confidence.

  Reveals when free sources are good enough vs when paid is needed. Reach for this before recommending an upstream source.

  podcast-goat-pp-cli source compare https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/vanguard --json

• speakers list — Aggregate speaker names across the cached corpus with episode counts, optionally filtered by show.

  Answers 'what do I have on Senra/Buffett/Karpathy'. Reach for this when building a synthesis prompt.

  podcast-goat-pp-cli speakers list --show acquired --json

Multilingual reach

• episode get --bilingual — yt-dlp dual-language auto-subs, greedy nearest-neighbor alignment, emits one markdown file with paired Chinese + auto-translated English per turn.

  Makes Mandarin-only podcasts (e.g., Xiaojun) usable for English-reading agents in one step.

  podcast-goat-pp-cli episode get 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXAMPLE' --bilingual zh-Hans,en

Agent-native plumbing

• auth services — One-row-per-service table of cookie age, expiry, last-fetch result, with remediation hint when stale.

  Cookies decay silently. Reach for this before a batch run to confirm member access still works.

  podcast-goat-pp-cli auth services --json

• budget show --by-show — Pivot spend.jsonl joined to episodes by URL; group by show, provider, month to attribute cost.

  Shows which subscriptions are paying off and which shows still cost money. Reach for this monthly.

  podcast-goat-pp-cli budget show --by-show --since 30 --json

Usage

Run podcast-goat-pp-cli --help for the full command reference and flag list.

Commands

episode

Pull, search, and inspect podcast episode transcripts

• podcast-goat-pp-cli episode get - Fetch one transcript by URL via the cookie -> free -> paid dispatch chain
• podcast-goat-pp-cli episode latest - Pull the most recent episode for a subscribed feed

Output Formats

# Human-readable table (default in terminal, JSON when piped)
podcast-goat-pp-cli episode get mock-value

# JSON for scripting and agents
podcast-goat-pp-cli episode get mock-value --json

# Filter to specific fields
podcast-goat-pp-cli episode get mock-value --json --select id,name,status

# Dry run — show the request without sending
podcast-goat-pp-cli episode get mock-value --dry-run

# Agent mode — JSON + compact + no prompts in one flag
podcast-goat-pp-cli episode get mock-value --agent

Agent Usage

This CLI is designed for AI agent consumption:

• Non-interactive - never prompts, every input is a flag
• Pipeable - --json output to stdout, errors to stderr
• Filterable - --select id,name returns only fields you need
• Previewable - --dry-run shows the request without sending
• Read-only by default - this CLI does not create, update, delete, publish, send, or mutate remote resources
• Offline-friendly - sync/search commands can use the local SQLite store when available
• Agent-safe by default - no colors or formatting unless --human-friendly is set

Exit codes: 0 success, 2 usage error, 3 not found, 4 auth error, 5 API error, 7 rate limited, 10 config error.

Health Check

podcast-goat-pp-cli doctor

Verifies configuration, credentials, and connectivity to the API.

Configuration

Config file: ~/.config/podcast-goat/config.toml

Static request headers can be configured under headers; per-command header overrides take precedence.

Environment variables:

Name	Kind	Required	Description
SPOKEN_API_KEY	per_call	Yes	Set to your API credential.
TADDY_API_KEY	per_call	Yes	Set to your API credential.
TADDY_USER_ID	per_call	Yes	Set to your API credential.
OPENAI_API_KEY	per_call	Yes	Set to your API credential.
DEEPGRAM_API_KEY	per_call	Yes	Set to your API credential.
ELEVENLABS_API_KEY	per_call	Yes	Set to your API credential.

Troubleshooting

Authentication errors (exit code 4)

• Run podcast-goat-pp-cli doctor to check credentials
• Verify the environment variable is set: echo $SPOKEN_API_KEY Not found errors (exit code 3)
• Check the resource ID is correct
• Run the list command to see available items

API-specific

• episode get returns nothing on a member URL — Run auth services to confirm the service cookie isn't stale; re-run auth login-service --service <name> if so.
• yt-dlp YouTube path fails with 'no subtitles' — Some YouTube videos have no auto-subs. Use --provider whisper --provider-name elevenlabs to transcribe from audio (requires ELEVENLABS_API_KEY).
• Paid fallback fires when you expected cookie hit — Run episode get <url> --explain to see the dispatcher trace — usually a cookie expiry or a URL host that doesn't match a known publisher.
• Bilingual alignment looks off — yt-dlp auto-translate quality varies. Pass --align greedy|exact to switch alignment strategy; exact requires both tracks to have matching segment counts.

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Sources & Inspiration

This CLI was built by studying these projects and resources:

• podscript — Python
• summarize — Swift
• youwhisper-cli — Python
• yt-transcript — Python
• faster-whisper-skill — Python
• yt-dlp — Python
• spoken.md (vendor) — API
• Taddy podcast-api (vendor) — API

Generated by CLI Printing Press