Media Ingest Skill

Ingest video, audio, PDF, book, screenshot, and GitHub repo content into the brain.

Filing rule: Read skills/_brain-filing-rules.md before creating any new page.

Input

Parameter	Required	Description
source	yes	URL, file path, or uploaded file reference
title	no	Override title (auto-detected if omitted)
target_slug	no	Override page slug (auto-generated if omitted)

Contract

This skill guarantees:

• Every ingested media item has a brain page with analysis (not just a transcript dump)
• Transcripts (video/audio) saved in raw and human-readable formats
• Entity extraction: every person and company mentioned gets back-linked
• Raw source files preserved via gbrain files upload-raw
• Filing by primary subject, not by media format

Convention: See skills/conventions/quality.md for Iron Law back-linking.

Every mention of a person or company with a brain page MUST create a back-link.

Phases

Phase 1: Identify format and fetch

Format	Action
YouTube/video URL	Fetch transcript (Whisper, transcription service, or captions)
Audio file	Transcribe with available STT service
PDF	Extract text (OCR if needed)
Book PDF	Extract text, identify chapters/sections
Screenshot/image	OCR via vision model, extract text and entities
GitHub repo	Clone, read README + key files, summarize architecture

Phase 2: Upload raw source

Save the original file for provenance: gbrain files upload-raw <file> --page <slug>

Phase 3: Create brain page

File by primary subject (not format). Use this template:

# {Title}

**Source:** {URL or file path}
**Format:** {video/audio/PDF/book/screenshot/repo}
**Created:** {date}

## Summary
{Key points, not a transcript dump}

## Key Segments / Highlights
{For video/audio: timestamped highlights. For books: chapter summaries.}

## People Mentioned
{List with links to brain pages}

## Companies Mentioned
{List with links to brain pages}

Phase 4: Entity extraction and propagation

For every person and company mentioned:

1. Check brain for existing page
2. Create/enrich if needed (delegate to enrich skill)
3. Add back-link from entity page to this media page
4. Add timeline entry on entity page

A media item is NOT fully ingested until entity propagation is complete.

Phase 5: Sync

gbrain sync to update the index.

Output Format

Brain page created with summary, highlights, and entity cross-links. Report to user: "Ingested {title}: {N} entities detected, {N} pages updated."

Error Handling

• Transcription failure: If STT or captions are unavailable, note [transcript unavailable] in the page and proceed with whatever metadata is available. Do NOT fabricate content.
• Duplicate detection: Before creating a page, search the brain for the source URL or file hash. If found, ask the user whether to update the existing page or skip.
• Partial OCR / audio: Mark unclear segments with [inaudible] or [illegible]. Never guess at proper nouns.
• Large content (books > 500 pages): Summarize by chapter; do not attempt to inline the full text. Link to the raw upload.
• Retry policy: On transient API failures (network, timeout), retry once. On auth failures, abort immediately.

Known Pitfalls

1. YouTube auto-captions misidentify proper nouns. Always cross-reference entity names against existing brain pages before creating new ones. A caption that garbles a name (e.g. "Alise" when the speakers are discussing alice-example) should match the existing alice-example page, not create a new one.
2. Re-running ingest on same source creates duplicates. Always check brain for existing source URL match before Phase 3.
3. Book OCR quality varies wildly. Scanned PDFs often have garbled text. If OCR quality is <80% readable, flag to user rather than ingesting garbage.
4. Video transcript without speaker diarization is low-value. If multiple speakers are present but no diarization is available, note this limitation prominently rather than attributing all speech to one person.
5. Large audio files (>2hr) can timeout transcription services. Split into chunks before transcription if needed.

When it fails

Follow the agent operator protocol for any gbrain error code, exit code, [AGENT] block or notice block. Specific to this skill:

• Transcription fails: write [transcript unavailable] and continue with metadata; never fabricate content.
• A transient API failure (network, timeout, rate_limited): retry once. On an auth failure, abort and tell the user which provider key is missing.
• file_upload refused (size, path outside the allowed root): tell the user the raw file was not stored and keep a pointer in the page.

Anti-Patterns

• Dumping raw transcripts without analysis
• Skipping entity extraction ("I'll do that separately")
• Filing raw ingest by format (all videos in media/videos/) instead of by subject. Note: format-prefixed paths under media/<format>/<slug> ARE sanctioned for synthesized one-of-one output like book-mirror's media/books/<slug>-personalized.md. The anti-pattern is for raw ingest, not for sui generis synthesis. See skills/_brain-filing-rules.md "Sanctioned exception: synthesis output is sui generis."
• Not preserving raw source files
• Creating stub pages without meaningful content