Hook Craft For Short-Form
A hook is not one clever sentence. It is four aligned signals built from archetypes, slot grammar, a three-beat structure, and a diagnostic pass. This skill turns that into an agent-readable playbook.
Sources
4
Refs
1
Steps
20
Outputs
3
What It Does
Use it when the job needs a real procedure.
Draft or rewrite an opening for short-form video (TikTok, Reels, Shorts, vertical YouTube).
Draft or rewrite a blog lede, LinkedIn opener, Twitter thread first line, or email subject.
Open a demo video, sales call recording, conference talk, or pitch deck slide 1.
Audit a draft hook the founder already wrote — score, diagnose, and propose rewrites.
Tag a competitor's hook against the slot grammar to learn from it (copy-work).
Outputs
The page is for humans first. The files in the rail make the same procedure available to agents.
Try It
Start with one of these prompts.
Generate 12 hook options for this idea and audience.
Try in BuildOSAudit this opener for clarity, curiosity, and payoff.
Try in BuildOSProcedure
The operating path
- 1
Inventory the visual. What footage, screen recording, prop, signature object, or motion graphic is actually available? If none, decide: manufacture one (text overlay + stock + jump-cut), or kill the video idea. Do not write a hook for a video without a key visual.
- 2
Find the biggest contrast. Of all the angles available on this topic, which produces the largest A → B gap? That contrast picks the archetype.
- 3
Pick the archetype from the available visual + the strength of the contrast (archetype table in Knowledge below).
- 4
Slot-fill the spoken hook by writing each slot in order: Subject, Action, Objective, Contrast (mandatory). Then ask whether Proof and Time earn their place.
- 5
Lay out the three beats. Express the slot stack across context lean, scroll-stop, and contrarian snapback. Cap each sentence at ~12 words. Default to staccato rhythm in the hook; let the body breathe later.
- 6
Write the text overlay. 3–5 words, big bold font, distilling the topic in the audience's working vocabulary — not the literal product or feature name. ("Future of home design" beats "life-size floor plans." "Your second brain catches up" beats "BuildOS phase 2.")
- 7
Specify the visual cue. Talking-head with subtle motion, rapid match-cut, product motion, or visual pacifier. Calibrate motion like a deer's peripheral vision — too much overwhelms; too little bores.
- 8
Specify the audio cue. Music or SFX choice; or none. Default: voice-led, no music, until a recurring audio signature is established.
- 9
Run the four-mistake diagnostic. Delay → Confusion → Irrelevance → Disinterest. Reject and rewrite on any failure.
- 10
Run the comprehension sandwich test. Watch silent → with audio → silent again. The eye scans the visual, then the ear parses the spoken hook, then the eye returns to confirm. Do all four signals (spoken / visual / text / audio) point at the same key visual? If not, stop and rework — or kill the idea.
- 11
Generate 3–5 variants using different archetypes and lean mechanisms. Never ship a single hook draft.
- 12
Output all four signals as a labelled bundle (see Contract).
- 13
Slot-tag the draft. Map each word/phrase to a slot. Mark missing mandatory slots explicitly.
- 14
Identify the archetype the draft is implicitly using.
- 15
Run the four-mistake diagnostic in order. Stop at the first failure and rewrite that pass before continuing.
- 16
Run the ambiguity test in isolation.
- 17
Score the two-variable hook test: topic clarity (yes/no), on-target curiosity (yes/no). Refuse to ship anything below 2/2.
- 18
Propose the LLM clarity rewrite using the verbatim Kallaway prompt: _"I've written a hook for a short-form video about X topic. I need help increasing the clarity and the framing of the sentences I used. I want the meaning to be the exact same, but can you rewrite this in a sixth-grade reading level so that there's no misunderstanding from the viewer?"_ Use the LLM only for clarity rewriting of an existing draft — never for hook generation from scratch.
- 19
Generate 3 rewrite candidates that fix the identified failure mode.
- 20
Re-run the comprehension sandwich on the chosen candidate.
Boundaries
What the skill refuses or checks carefully
No empty snapbacks. If the body does not pay off the hook's promise, refuse to ship — regardless of cleverness. The agent must verify the payoff exists before drafting the hook.
No vague-suspense hooks on text-only platforms. Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit, blog ledes — verbal clarity must carry the weight. Vague-suspense ("you won't believe this") only works with strong visual or text-overlay scaffolding.
No literal product names in text overlays when an emotional category phrase exists.
No jargon in the spoken hook. "Generative world model" fails. "Ontology" fails. "Context engineering" fails. Translate to working-vocabulary terms or kill the hook.
No hooks where the topic is missing from the first 5–7 words (Delay pass).
No hooks scoring below 2/2 on topic clarity + on-target curiosity.
Examples
Runtime examples
Worked Example
- Archetype: Experimenter — picked from the available footage, not the topic: a live screen recording of a rambling transcript becoming a structured board is an old-method → new-method demo shown live.
- Slot map:
- Subject: you / your messy notes
- Action: dump everything into one place
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