youtube-scriptwriting

A structured method for turning rough ideas, notes, or research into polished YouTube video scripts. It uses checkpoints to define the audience, promise, emotion, research, and story structure.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to write educational or entertainment scripts, create opening hooks, improve video retention, and turn transcripts or brain dumps into finished scripts.
Why use it?
It gives unorganized material a repeatable shape and helps keep viewers interested from the opening to the end.

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/youtube-scriptwriting
Any agent
npx skills add cdeistopened/skill-stack --skill youtube-scriptwriting
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/cdeistopened/skill-stack

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 81 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,279 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 $0.00081 $0.01279
Opus 5 $0.00041 $0.00639
Sonnet 5 $0.00016 $0.00256
Haiku 4.5 $0.00008 $0.00128

Measured 2d ago against content hash 823786c7411a, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

youtube-scriptwriting 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 2d 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/youtube-scriptwriting/SKILL.md · 145 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 145 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

YouTube Script Writing

Transform disorganized ideas into retention-optimized scripts through a checkpoint-based workflow.

Core Psychology

All great scripts operate on one principle: Reality must beat expectations.

  • Viewer expectations = what they think will happen based on title/thumbnail
  • Reality = what you actually deliver in the video
  • When reality > expectations → satisfaction, engagement, shares
  • When reality < expectations → disappointment, drop-off, bounce

Every decision in scriptwriting serves this gap.

The Workflow

Work through these checkpoints in order. Each builds on the previous.

Checkpoint 1: Define the Foundation

Before writing anything:

  1. Target audience: Who specifically is watching? What do they already know?
  2. Desired emotion: Pick ONE primary emotion to transfer:
    • Awe/inspiration
    • Amusement/humor
    • Excitement/joy
    • Anger/outrage
    • Surprise/shock/curiosity
    • Sadness/empathy
  3. Core promise: One sentence describing what viewer gets from watching

Checkpoint 2: Research & Mine for Shock

Find the facts that will beat expectations. See references/research.md.

Shock Score Method: Rate each fact 1-100 based on "How many viewers would NOT know this?"

  • 80+ = Gold (most viewers surprised)
  • 50-79 = Good supporting points
  • Below 50 = Skip unless essential context

Collect 5-10 high-shock facts before proceeding.

Checkpoint 3: Write the Hook

The hook confirms the click and opens a curiosity loop. See references/hooks.md for the 9 proven formats.

Quick Formula (works for any niche):

  • Target: Who is this for?
  • Transformation: What will they gain?
  • Stakes: What happens if they don't watch?

Hook Commandments (verify all 4):

  1. Alignment: Visual, spoken, and text hooks match
  2. Speed: Value promised in first 3 seconds
  3. Clarity: Topic is unmistakable
  4. Curiosity: Opens a question they must answer

Checkpoint 4: Choose Story Structure & Outline

Read the full file on GitHub · 145 lines

Files

What ships with it

6 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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. 2d ago First seen · 145 lines · 81 tokens per session scan A 823786c7411a

Subscribe to this mod's changes

youtube-scriptwriting is a skill published in the GitHub repository cdeistopened/skill-stack (27 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 81 tokens to every session and 1,279 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.

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