Summarize is a CLI tool and browser extension that extracts clean text and generates summaries from web pages, YouTube videos, podcasts, files, and other media.
The tool solves the problem of quickly understanding content from diverse sources without manually reading or watching them. It extracts readable text from web pages using Readability with optional Markdown and Firecrawl fallbacks, handles PDFs and images with model attachments where supported, retrieves published transcripts from YouTube and podcasts before falling back to transcription, and processes audio and video through local or cloud transcription with optional speaker labels. For video content, it can extract scene-based frames with optional OCR and timestamped output. Users can run extraction alone to get clean content without an API key, or configure a supported LLM provider for model-generated summaries.
The tool suits developers and users who need to quickly digest content from multiple sources and want flexibility in how they access it. The CLI requires Node.js 24 or newer via npm, though standalone builds are available through Homebrew and GitHub Releases. The browser extension works as a Chrome Side Panel or Firefox Sidebar and can operate in direct mode without a companion service, or pair with an installed CLI for additional capabilities like native media tool support, shared caches, and Firefox media handling. Users can choose between extracting content only, generating summaries with configured models, or working with video transcripts and slides through the extension's chat interface.
Responses to issues and pull requests typically take one to two weeks. The issue tracker shows activity concentrated on medium-priority work and items marked to prevent new fix pull requests, with engagement focused on substantive feature and quality discussions.
