hook-and-headline-writing

hook-and-headline-writing is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from cdeistopened/skill-stack. It costs 72 tokens per session (4,164 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A writing guide for generating and evaluating hooks and headlines. A hook is the opening line intended to make someone keep reading or watching.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to create newsletter subjects, social-media openings, blog headlines, and headline variations for comparison.
Why use it?
It replaces one-off brainstorming with several specified headline patterns and a way to compare the results.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/cdeistopened/skill-stack/hook-and-headline-writing
Any agent
npx skills add cdeistopened/skill-stack --skill hook-and-headline-writing
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/cdeistopened/skill-stack

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for hook-and-headline-writing

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/cdeistopened/skill-stack/hook-and-headline-writing.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/cdeistopened/skill-stack/hook-and-headline-writing)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/cdeistopened/skill-stack/hook-and-headline-writing"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/cdeistopened/skill-stack/hook-and-headline-writing.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 72 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 4,164 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00072 $0.04164
Opus 5 $0.00036 $0.02082
Sonnet 5 $0.00014 $0.00833
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00416

Measured 4d ago against content hash cd1e30e8dd23, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

hook-and-headline-writing scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 4d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

.claude/skills/hook-and-headline-writing/SKILL.md · 509 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 509 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Hook and Headline Writer

Create hooks and headlines that stop the scroll and compel action using systematic frameworks, not guesswork.

Purpose

80% of content performance comes from the hook. This skill provides the frameworks to craft headlines that capture attention and drive engagement - for any industry, any platform, any content type.

Core Philosophy: Generate volume (10+ options), then select best using proven criteria. The first option is rarely the best option.

When to Use This Skill

  • Writing newsletter subject lines that get opens
  • Crafting social media thread hooks that stop the scroll
  • Creating LinkedIn post first lines that compel "see more"
  • Optimizing headlines for blog posts or articles
  • Generating multiple hook variations for A/B testing

Pairs well with: anti-ai-writing (for humanizing headlines), voice style skills (for brand-specific tone)


Key Principles

The 3-Sentence Rule for Social Hooks

  • Maximum 3 sentences for social media hooks
  • First sentence MUST be short
  • Each sentence's goal: get reader to the next

The 25% Rule

How to allocate time on any content:

  • 25% ideation (identifying what to say)
  • 25% hook/headline (crafting how to say it)
  • 50% body content

Volume → Selection

  • Generate 10+ variations minimum
  • Select best using systematic criteria (not gut feel)
  • The first option is rarely the best option

Story = Problem + Goal + Path

This equation equals value. Use it to identify what transformation your hook promises.


The 3-Phase Workflow

Phase 1: Generate Hook Ideas (Ideation)

Goal: Identify the core benefit, transformation, or insight your hook will promise

Step 1: Use the "Start Questioning" Method

Ask who/what/where/when/why/how about your topic. Then dig deeper by asking multiple times on the same answer.

Example:

  • Topic: Productivity systems
  • What? "What is the system?" → Time-blocking with deep work periods
  • Why? "Why does it work?" → Eliminates context switching
  • Why (deeper)? "Why does that matter?" → You get 3x output in half the time
  • How? "How do people fail at this?" → They schedule too many blocks
  • Impact angle discovered: "The counterintuitive key to time-blocking: schedule LESS"

Read the full file on GitHub · 509 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 4d ago First seen · 509 lines · 72 tokens per session scan A cd1e30e8dd23

Subscribe to this mod's changes

hook-and-headline-writing is a skill published in the GitHub repository cdeistopened/skill-stack (27 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 72 tokens to every session and 4,164 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

systematic-debugging

Use when encountering any bug, test failure, or unexpected behavior, before proposing fixes.

obra/superpowers · 21 tokens

brainstorming

You MUST use this before any creative work - creating features, building components, adding functionality, or modifying behavior. Explores user intent, requirements and design before implementation.

obra/superpowers · 37 tokens

auto-perf-optimize

Run agent-driven VS Code performance or memory investigations. Use when asked to launch Code OSS, automate a VS Code scenario, run the Chat memory smoke runner, capture renderer heap snapshots, take workflow screenshots, compare run summaries, or drive a repeatable scenario before heap-snapshot analysis.

microsoft/vscode · 62 tokens

chat-perf

Run chat perf benchmarks and memory leak checks against the local dev build or any published VS Code version. Use when investigating chat rendering regressions, validating perf-sensitive changes to chat UI, or checking for memory leaks in the chat response pipeline.

microsoft/vscode · 51 tokens

chat-pet-sprite-creation

Use when creating or changing VS Code chat pet sprite art, sprite sheets, state animations, eye treatments, Stable/Insiders variants, or pet transitions under src/vs/workbench/contrib/chat/browser/widget/media/chatPet.

microsoft/vscode · 53 tokens

cpu-profile-analysis

Analyze V8/Chrome CPU profiles (.cpuprofile) and DevTools trace files (Trace-.json). Use when: profiling performance, investigating slow functions, comparing code paths, finding bottlenecks, analyzing timeToRequest, understanding call trees from sampling profiler data, analyzing layout/paint/rendering, investigating…

microsoft/vscode · 71 tokens