yt-dlp Operations

Operational expertise for yt-dlp as the acquisition layer: get the right bytes onto disk in the right codec, politely, resumably — then hand off. Anything that re-encodes, cuts precisely, grades, or packages after download is ffmpeg-ops territory; AI-driven editing of what you acquired (transcript → EDL → final cut) is cutcraft — the full chain is acquire → process → edit.

Doctrine: version first, formats second

yt-dlp vs the platforms is an arms race. Releases land near-monthly and extractors break between them — the majority of "yt-dlp is broken" reports are a stale binary. Before debugging anything, check staleness:

bash skills/ytdlp-ops/scripts/check-ytdlp-version.sh --live          # vs latest GitHub release
bash skills/ytdlp-ops/scripts/check-ytdlp-version.sh --live --json | jq '.data.days_behind'