youtube-thumbnail

youtube-thumbnail is a skill for Claude Code from naveedharri/benai-skills. It costs 204 tokens per session (3,564 once invoked), scanned C, original, MIT.

A tool-guided workflow for creating branded YouTube thumbnail images from a video idea and optional reference images. It produces three image variations and a record of the inputs used.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to create thumbnails for Ben van Sprundel's YouTube videos, including variations based on a concept, past thumbnail, photo, logo, or other supplied image.
Why use it?
It removes the need to manually turn a video concept and visual references into separate thumbnail designs. If a referenced image is unavailable, it makes that missing input explicit.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: disable-model-invocation in frontmatter. Also seen: mentions CLAUDE.md; mentions Claude Code.

Part of the benai-marketing plugin — 13 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it to create thumbnails for Ben van Sprundel's YouTube videos, including variations based on a concept, past thumbnail, photo, logo, or other supplied image.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/naveedharri/benai-skills/youtube-thumbnail
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.

Any agent
npx skills add naveedharri/benai-skills --skill youtube-thumbnail
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/naveedharri/benai-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install benai-marketing, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 13 skills.

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 youtube-thumbnail

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/naveedharri/benai-skills/youtube-thumbnail/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/naveedharri/benai-skills/youtube-thumbnail)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/naveedharri/benai-skills/youtube-thumbnail"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/naveedharri/benai-skills/youtube-thumbnail/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for youtube-thumbnail

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/naveedharri/benai-skills/youtube-thumbnail"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/naveedharri/benai-skills/youtube-thumbnail.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 204 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 3,564 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan C 1 finding. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
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 5.1 $0.00204 $0.03564
Opus 5 $0.00102 $0.01782
Sonnet 5 $0.00041 $0.00713
Haiku 4.5 $0.00020 $0.00356

Measured 7d ago against content hash 8f952274b81d, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade C, and why

youtube-thumbnail scanned grade C with 1 finding 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 7d 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.

Tells the agent never to refusehighAnti-refusal

Suppressing the ability to decline removes a core safety control; a later harmful request then succeeds.

Read `Context/youtube-thumbnail-style.md` if it exists; pull palette, framing library, expression library, lighting, prohibited list, and anchor refs. If it is missing or has `[FILL]` blocks, do not refuse: fall back to
plugins/benai-marketing/skills/youtube-thumbnail/SKILL.md · 143 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 143 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

YouTube Thumbnail Generate

One-shot thumbnail generation. Takes a concept (plus optional reference image and count), infers everything else, ships 3 variants and a manifest.

Inputs

Two things, ideally both in the user's first message:

  1. Concept: what the thumbnail should show. A sentence or phrase. ("Claude Code Skills, why it changes everything for solo founders")
  2. Reference image(s) (optional but recommended, may be multiple): a past thumbnail, a photo of Ben, a second subject, a style anchor, a real logo PNG, or any combination. Determines the mode AND all of them must be passed into the generation. Never silently drop a user-supplied reference; if they gave you one, it must end up in medias[]. If they gave you a LIST, read EVERY image in the list, then pass every relevant one (don't pre-select just one). Every reference image MUST be visually read with the Read tool before the prompt is built (see rule 2).

If the user mentions a reference image but does not provide a path or attachment, ASK for the path BEFORE doing anything else. Examples that require asking: "use my previous thumbnail as a ref" (which file?), "include the Anthropic logo" (where is the PNG?), "match this style" (which image?). Ask in one short line: "Got it, what's the file path for the reference image?" Do not guess, do not proceed, do not generate without seeing the path.

Optional third: variant count. Defaults to 3. Max 4.

If the concept is missing or genuinely unclear, ask ONE combined question:

"What should the thumbnail show, and how many variations do you want? (default 3)"

Do not split into multiple questions. Do not ask about mode, model, or palette; all of that is inferred or read from the style spec.

Identity Anchor (no Soul required)

Every new-with-ben thumbnail uses a reference photo of Ben as the identity anchor, passed as medias[0]. The photo lives at Projects/youtube/thumbnails/refs/ben_reference_{YYYY-QQ}.jpg.

If the user did NOT attach a photo of Ben and there is no ben_reference_*.jpg in refs/, ask once for a photo. Without it, new-with-ben cannot produce a faithful Ben rendering.

Read the full file on GitHub · 143 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. 7d ago First seen · 143 lines · 204 tokens per session scan C 8f952274b81d

Subscribe to this mod's changes

youtube-thumbnail is a skill published in the GitHub repository naveedharri/benai-skills (61 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 204 tokens to every session and 3,564 once invoked, about $0.0010 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it C with 1 finding (tells the agent never to refuse). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-09-05.

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