Outlier YouTube videos turned into title and outline ideas

Outlier YouTube videos turned into title and outline ideas

An n8n workflow for planning videos. Send a keyword, and it finds this month's YouTube videos on it that have more
views than their channel has subscribers. For each new one, OpenAI describes the thumbnail and reads the transcript,
then writes a new title, thumbnail text and outline into a Google Sheet.

What is inside

• workflow.json: the workflow as n8n exports it, eleven nodes and no sticky notes. It holds no credential.
• README.md: these notes.

What we changed from the original copy

• The Authorization headers of the two Apify calls held bare placeholders. They now read <YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>.
• The author's spreadsheet is gone. The three Google Sheets nodes ask for YOUR_SHEET_ID and find their tab by the
  name Step 1.

Before you start

• An n8n instance, on n8n Cloud or your own server.
• An Apify account and its API token, with credit for two Actors the file calls by their IDs: a YouTube search Actor
  (h7sDV53CddomktSi5) and a transcript Actor (1s7eXiaukVuOr4Ueg).
• An OpenAI API key for gpt-4o-mini, gpt-4.1-mini and gpt-4.1.
• A Google account, and a Google Sheet with a tab named Step 1 and the headers below.

The sheet

Write these 17 headers in row 1 of Step 1, spelled as shown:

| Filled by | Headers |
|---|---|
| Step 1 Results | input, id, title, url, fromYTUrl, thumbnailUrl, channelName, channelUrl, duration, likes, numberOfSubscribers, viewCount |
| Update Rows | videoTranscript, thumbnailDescription, thumbnailText, newTitle, newOutline |

id is the YouTube video's ID. Both Find Duplicate Entries and Update Rows find rows by it.

Set it up

1. In n8n, create a workflow, open its menu and choose Import from File. Pick workflow.json.
2. Make the sheet, then copy its ID: the long part of its address between /d/ and /edit.
3. Add a Google Sheets OAuth2 credential. In Find Duplicate Entries, Step 1 Results and Update Rows, select it
   and replace YOUR_SHEET_ID with the ID.
4. Add an OpenAI credential and select it in Analyze Thumbnail, YouTube Title Generator and Outline Generator.
5. In YouTube Video Scrape and HTTP Request, replace <YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN> in the Authorization header with your
   token. The brackets go too, so the header reads Bearer, a space and the token.
6. Save, open the form's test address and send one keyword.
7. Press Publish once the rows look right.

How a run goes

1. On form submission takes Keyword or Topic.
2. YouTube Video Scrape asks Apify for up to 100 videos on it: uploaded this month, 4 to 20 minutes long, newest
   first, with no Shorts or streams.
3. If keeps a video when it has over 1,000 views and more views than its channel has subscribers.
4. Find Duplicate Entries looks each one up in the sheet by id. Merge keeps only the videos it did not find.
5. Step 1 Results adds each new video as a row.
6. Analyze Thumbnail describes the thumbnail in one paragraph, at high detail.
7. HTTP Request runs the transcript Actor for the video and gets the words back in captions.
8. YouTube Title Generator writes newTitle, under 70 characters, and thumbnailText, 3 to 5 words.
9. Outline Generator writes a new outline with a different angle on the same topic.
10. Update Rows writes the five idea columns into the video's row.

Change the result

• What counts as an outlier: the two tests in If. Raise 1,000 for a busy niche.
• What is searched: the JSON body of YouTube Video Scrape, including the date filter, the length filter and
  maxResults.
• The title and the thumbnail text: the system message of YouTube Title Generator.
• The outline: the system message of Outline Generator, which asks for a hook, an introduction, main points and a
  call to action.
• Models: gpt-4o-mini in Analyze Thumbnail, gpt-4.1-mini in YouTube Title Generator, gpt-4.1 in
  Outline Generator.

Good to know

• Each outlier costs one transcript run on Apify and three OpenAI calls, on top of the search itself.
• The transcript and the thumbnail come from someone else's video. Use the outline as a starting point and make the
  video your own.
• Find Duplicate Entries reads the sheet once for each video that passed If, so a big search makes many reads.
• Apify's API reference gives a synchronous call 300 seconds. A search that takes longer ends without its videos.
• OpenAI's deprecations page, read on 2 November 2026, lists GPT-4o mini (gpt-4o-mini-2024-07-18), GPT-4.1
  (gpt-4.1-2025-04-14) and GPT-4.1 mini (gpt-4.1-mini-2025-04-14) for removal from the API on 14 January 2027,
  with gpt-6-luna as their replacement. Change all three models before then.
• Once published, anyone with the form's address can start a search on your Apify and OpenAI accounts.
• The Apify token sits in two headers, so take it out before you share the workflow.