Hook Doctor
Hook Doctor
A short-form video lives or dies in its first second. Feed viewers decide to stay or swipe while reading one line — usually with the sound off. Hook Doctor is an autopsy protocol for that line, built from daily production on a short-form knowledge channel where every failure pattern below repeatedly killed videos, and every rewrite move repeatedly revived them.
What it does
Show your agent a hook, an opening line, a full script — or just ask "why did this video die?" — and it runs the first line and first frame through eight field-tested failure patterns:
| # | Failure | The tell |
|---|---|---|
| F1 | Deferred payoff | Line 1 ends mid-thought ("Even if you wash your bedding weekly...") — the reason to stay is on a line nobody reads |
| F2 | Title, not speech | Bare noun phrase ("The truth about airplane coffee") — a label, not a claim |
| F3 | Hedged claim | "might / could" converts a punch into a shrug |
| F4 | Trivia framing | Origin/etymology angle with no self-relevance — "so what?" swipe |
| F5 | Unknown subject | A name nobody recognizes has no stopping power |
| F6 | Bait | Hook promises A, body pays B — worse than a weak hook |
| F7 | No tension | An agreeable statement everyone already believes |
| F8 | Buried number | Your most striking figure hidden in the body |
Then it produces ranked rewrites using five proven offensive moves (flat contradiction, command/participation, number lead, stakes transfer, costly question) — plus a promise ledger: exactly what the body must deliver, and by when, for the chosen hook to be honest.
It also checks the first frame: does it show the subject of line 1? Would frame + line survive as a screenshot? Wrong examples on screen get an explicit ✘ so muted scrollers don't remember the error as fact.
Example
Input: "My Short died. Hook was: 'The word Americano might have a military origin.'"
Output (abridged):
Failures: F3 ✗ (hedge — "might have" turns the punch into a shrug)
F4 ✗ (word-origin framing invites "so what?")
Rewrites (ranked)
1. "Your morning Americano is watered-down espresso — and soldiers
are the reason." — flat claim + stakes transfer
2. "American soldiers couldn't handle Italian espresso. Your coffee
order is the result." — reversal (only if the body supports it)
3. "You've been ordering diluted espresso all along — it even has a
name." — safest if the origin must stay tentative
Promise ledger: hook 1 promises WHY it's watered down and HOW soldiers
caused it. If the research can't state that flatly, use rewrite 3 —
the hook must not claim more certainty than the material holds.
The honesty rule
Hook Doctor never fabricates numbers, deadlines, or claims to strengthen a hook. A hook the body can't pay is bait (F6); a hook the facts can't pay is worse. Every rewrite stays inside what your material actually supports — and when the material itself has no tension, it says so and suggests what angle would fix it, instead of dressing up a dead topic.
Who it's for
- Shorts / Reels / TikTok creators whose videos are "fine" but die in the first second
- Editors and social video teams reviewing scripts before production
- Anyone A/B-testing hooks and wanting a systematic second opinion, not vibes
What you get
A single SKILL.md — clear, auditable instructions your agent follows. No scripts, no network calls, no credentials, nothing leaves your machine. Works with Claude Code and SKILL.md-compatible agents.
Note: This skill is a set of instructions for an AI agent; output quality depends on the underlying model. The patterns encode one channel's production experience — strong defaults, not laws of physics.
