Short-Form Script Gates
Short-Form Script Gates
Pre-publish quality gates for short-form video scripts (YouTube Shorts, Reels, TikTok), distilled from running a daily-output faceless knowledge channel. Each gate encodes a measured failure: episodes that violated these patterns died in the feed; episodes that satisfied them were the outliers that traveled.
What it does
Install this skill and your agent reviews (or writes) every script against five hard gates:
| Gate | Catches |
|---|---|
| 1. First line stands alone | Feed viewers decide in ~1 second, reading only line one. Conditional clauses ("If you wash your bedding weekly...") and bare noun phrases ("The truth about airplane coffee") defer the payoff to a line nobody reads. |
| 2. A reason to watch TODAY | The hook or twist must contain same-day relevance, a deadline, or an action directive — as a full sentence. The strongest predictor of sharing: people forward videos as a favor. |
| 3. Structure | Hook → exactly 3 facts → twist (after ≥2 facts) → closing identity line. Five facts is padding; twist-first is just a claim; ending on the twist drops your sign-off. One video, one topic. |
| 4. Works muted, works blind | Subtitles + visuals alone must carry the story, and narration + visuals alone must too. Wrong examples shown on screen get an explicit ✘ overlay — a muted scroller who catches one frame remembers the error as fact. |
| 5. Subtitle discipline | Subtitles = narration's exact words; max 1 highlight per line; no emoji/fraction glyphs that break rendering; "=" only for numeric conversions; no symbols in narration (TTS skips them silently). |
Every REJECT comes with a concrete rewrite, not just a verdict.
Example
Input:
Review this Shorts script — why isn't it performing?
HOOK line 1: "If you wash your bedding every single week..."
line 2: "dust mites might still be alive"
[5 facts, ends on the twist, subtitles with "=" and a ⅔ glyph]
Output (abridged):
## Script Gate Report
Gate 1 (first line): REJECT — conditional clause, payoff deferred to
line 2. Rewrite: "Dust mites survive your washing machine." /
line 2: "Even if you wash every single week."
Gate 2 (share trigger): REJECT — no today/deadline/action sentence.
Honest fix: "Before your next wash, check your machine's default
temperature — it's probably 30-40°C."
Gate 3 (structure): REJECT — 5 facts (cut 2 for a follow-up video);
ends on the twist with no closing line.
Gate 5 (subtitles): REJECT — "=" used twice and non-numerically;
⅔ glyph breaks rendering; 3 highlighted words on one line.
Verdict: FIX FIRST — rewrite skeleton included.
Who it's for
- Short-form creators and editors (Shorts / Reels / TikTok)
- Social video teams
- Anyone whose scripts are "fine" but don't survive the first second — or never get shared
What you get
A single SKILL.md — clear, auditable instructions your agent follows. No scripts, no network calls, no credentials, no data leaves your machine. Works with Claude Code and SKILL.md-compatible agents.
FAQ
Will it write scripts too, or only review them?
Both. When writing from scratch, it satisfies the gates during drafting and appends an honest self-review — if a gate can't pass for your topic, it says so and explains the trade-off.
Does it fabricate urgency to force Gate 2?
No — fabricated deadlines are rejected as a fact-check failure. If a topic genuinely has no same-day angle, the skill flags it as feed-proof but share-dead and lets you decide.
Note: This skill is a set of instructions for an AI agent; output quality depends on the underlying model. Gates encode one channel's measured experience — treat them as strong defaults, not laws of physics.
