Use when asked to analyze, review, or describe a local video file (e.g., .mp4, .mov). Describes how to use the `mt watch` command to stream large videos to Gemini securely with server-side context caching and multi-turn thread support.
mt watchUse this skill when you need to analyze a local video file. Large video files cannot be processed directly in your local context or uploaded as standard attachments without hitting token and size limits. The mt watch command provides a dedicated workflow to securely upload the video in chunks, cache it server-side, and stream Gemini model responses.
To start a new analysis on a video, run mt watch with the file path and your prompt:
mt watch "/path/to/video.mp4" "Describe what happens in this video in detail."
If the prompt is long or complex, you can construct it first and pass it via a variable:
PROMPT="Look closely at the UI transitions. What color is the primary button before and after the click?"
mt watch "/path/to/video.mp4" "$PROMPT"
The command will output the model's text response.
Note: For machine-readable output or extra diagnostics (like file deduplication or cache telemetry), append --json or --verbose.
When you run mt watch with the --verbose flag (or inspect the JSON output), you will receive a thread_id. You can use this thread_id to ask follow-up questions without re-uploading or re-processing the entire video from scratch.
# Add --verbose to see the thread_id
mt watch "/path/to/video.mp4" "Describe the video" --verbose
# Use the returned thread_id for a follow-up:
mt watch "/path/to/video.mp4" "What was the text on the second screen?" --thread <thread_id>