Summarize YouTube videos and generate thumbnails using AI Agent and deAPI

Description

Who is this for?

YouTube creators who want to speed up their post-production workflow
Content repurposers who turn videos into written summaries
Social media managers handling multiple YouTube channels
Anyone who needs quick, AI-generated thumbnails from video content

What problem does this solve?

Watching a full video to write a summary and then designing a matching thumbnail is tedious. This workflow does both automatically — transcribe, summarize, and generate a professional 1280x720 thumbnail — all from a single YouTube URL.

What this workflow does

Takes a YouTube video URL as input
Transcribes the full video using deAPI (Whisper Large V3)
AI Agent analyzes the transcript, writes a concise summary, and uses the deAPI Prompt Booster tool to craft an optimized thumbnail image prompt
Generates a 1280x720 landscape thumbnail using deAPI
Uploads the thumbnail to Google Drive

Setup

Requirements

n8n instance** (self-hosted or n8n Cloud)
deAPI account for video transcription, prompt boosting, and image generation
Anthropic account for the AI Agent
Google Drive API access for file uploads

Installing the deAPI Node

n8n Cloud: Go to **Settings → Community Nodes and toggle the "Verified Community Nodes" option
Self-hosted: Go to **Settings → Community Nodes and install n8n-nodes-deapi

Configuration

Add your deAPI credentials (API key + webhook secret)
Add your Anthropic credentials (API key)
Add your Google Drive credentials (OAuth2)
Set the target Google Drive folder ID in the Google Drive Upload node
Ensure your n8n instance is on HTTPS

How to customize this workflow

Change the AI model**: Swap Anthropic for OpenAI, Google Gemini, or any other LLM provider
Adjust the prompt style**: Modify the AI Agent system message to target different thumbnail aesthetics (minimalist, bold text overlay, cinematic, etc.)
Change the output destination**: Replace Google Drive with Dropbox, S3, Notion, or email delivery
Add a summary output**: Insert a Google Docs or Notion node after the AI Agent to save the written summary alongside the thumbnail
Process in bulk**: Replace the Manual Trigger with a Google Sheets trigger containing a list of YouTube URLs
Swap the trigger**: Use a Form Trigger to let team members submit YouTube URLs through a web form
Other video platforms**: The transcription node also supports Twitch VODs, X (Twitter), and Kick URLs