generate-youtube-thumbnail

generate-youtube-thumbnail is a skill for Claude Code from novoads/agent-skills. It costs 80 tokens per session (3,593 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A workflow for generating YouTube thumbnails with the Nano Banana Pro image model. A thumbnail is the preview image shown for a YouTube video.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to create a thumbnail, remake one using your face or product, or generate multiple concepts for an A/B test, which compares different versions to see which performs better.
Why use it?
It gives thumbnail requests a repeatable process for using reference images, matching a person’s appearance, and producing bounded batches of variations for comparison.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin. Also seen: reads .claude/ paths.

Part of the skills plugin — 17 skills shipped together , and of skills

Good fit Use it to create a thumbnail, remake one using your face or product, or generate multiple concepts for an A/B test, which compares different versions to see which performs better.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/novoads/agent-skills/generate-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 novoads/agent-skills --skill generate-youtube-thumbnail
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/novoads/agent-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install skills, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 17 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 generate-youtube-thumbnail

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/novoads/agent-skills/generate-youtube-thumbnail/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/novoads/agent-skills/generate-youtube-thumbnail)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/novoads/agent-skills/generate-youtube-thumbnail"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/novoads/agent-skills/generate-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 generate-youtube-thumbnail

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/novoads/agent-skills/generate-youtube-thumbnail"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/novoads/agent-skills/generate-youtube-thumbnail.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 80 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 3,593 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 1 finding. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector warn 7 Sept 2026
SkillSpector: 1 finding, up to medium

These are SkillSpector’s own severities. On a checked sample its high-severity flags on skills were ~96% false positives — a documented command, a public API, a “never do X” rule — so we show them as a caution to read, not a verdict. Why →

  • medium Data Exfiltration · line 125
    Data is being sent to an external URL. This could be legitimate telemetry or data exfiltration. Manual review is recommended.
    Fix: Verify the destination URL is trusted and necessary. Remove or replace with documented APIs. Ensure no secrets, tokens, or PII are transmitted.
How audits are shown
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 $0.00080 $0.03593
Opus 5 $0.00040 $0.01796
Sonnet 5 $0.00016 $0.00719
Haiku 4.5 $0.00008 $0.00359

Measured 10d ago against content hash b89e858fac04, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

generate-youtube-thumbnail scanned grade A 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 10d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 1 executable file (scripts/generate-batch.sh), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

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.

Makes network callslowCapability

Not a fault in itself. Listed so you know the mod talks to something, and to what.

curl -sS -X POST "$NOVOADS_BASE_URL/v1/estimates" \
skills/generate-youtube-thumbnail/SKILL.md · 291 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 291 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Generate YouTube Thumbnail

A reusable workflow for creating YouTube thumbnails via Novoads' POST /v1/images with nano-banana-pro, with proper character likeness and proven CTR formulas.

When to use this skill

Trigger on phrases like:

  • "make me a YouTube thumbnail"
  • "create a thumbnail for this video"
  • "I need thumbnail variations / A/B tests"
  • "remake this thumbnail with my face"
  • "generate 10 thumbnail concepts"
  • "thumbnail with [me / my product / my brand]"

Read order

Paths below are relative to this skill's own folder, and every file they name ships inside it. That holds wherever the folder lands: the repo, the .claude/skills/ and .cursor/skills/ copies sync-skill.sh makes, or a standalone install of just this skill.

  1. This file — workflow, decision tree, batch generation
  2. prompting/guide.md — likeness alignment, expressions cheat sheet, prompt structure
  3. prompting/formulas.md — 5 proven thumbnail formulas with templates
  4. scripts/generate-batch.sh — the batch script (upload once → generate → download)

For the API contract itself — error codes, rate limits, the upload flow — the novoads-api skill's reference.md is the authority.

Prerequisites

  • .env with NOVOADS_API_KEY (novo_ + 64 hex). Verify with ./scripts/check-novoads-env.sh.
  • Optional PRODUCT_ID. Omit it and jobs land in your default product; productId is organizational only and does not influence what is generated.
  • Reference images on disk (NOT pasted in chat — chat-pasted images are NOT accessible to the API):
    • face/ — several photos of the subject (headshot + 3/4 angles + close-ups + expressions)
    • logos/ — brand logos as files
    • products/ — clean product shots
    • examples/ — real ad screenshots, comparison material
    • style/ — example thumbnails the user wants to match aesthetically

REST key required. A Novoads MCP connector is not a substitute. If NOVOADS_API_KEY is missing or still the placeholder, stop before any generation work and tell the user: "Before continuing, create an API key at https://novoads.ai/dashboard/settings?tab=api and paste it into .env." That holds even when mcp__novoads__* tools are connected and authenticated in the session. Never call mcp__novoads__* tools from this repo's workflows: they are a different surface with different behavior, including the units they quote costs in. Repo installs verify with ./scripts/check-novoads-env.sh; a solo install checks NOVOADS_API_KEY in the environment.

Read the full file on GitHub · 291 lines

Files

What ships with it

5 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. 10d ago First seen · 291 lines · 80 tokens per session scan A b89e858fac04

Subscribe to this mod's changes

generate-youtube-thumbnail is a skill published in the GitHub repository novoads/agent-skills (14 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 80 tokens to every session and 3,593 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 1 finding (makes network calls). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.

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