Content creationClaude

🔬 Reverse-engineer any viral video

Stop watching viral videos like a fan and start reading them like an editor. This is a repeatable analysis system — a saved prompt that breaks down any video's mechanics so you can apply the pattern (not the content) to your own.

Step 1: Transcribe the video

Watch the video 2-3 times and note: the exact first line, the visual in the first two seconds, each beat of what happens, on-screen text, and where you personally felt the urge to keep watching or scroll away. (Auto-captions, when available, speed this up.)

Step 2: The analysis prompt (save this one)

You are a short-form video analyst. Here's my breakdown of a video that got [views] in [niche]: [paste notes]. Reverse-engineer it: 1. THE HOOK — what promise or tension do the first 3 seconds create, and through which channel (words, visual, text overlay)? 2. THE RETENTION ENGINE — beat by beat, what open question keeps you watching? Where would drop-off risk spike? 3. THE STRUCTURE — name the skeleton (problem/agitate/solve, transformation reveal, list countdown, contrarian take...) in a reusable form. 4. THE SHARE TRIGGER — why would someone send this to a friend? Identity, usefulness, or emotion? 5. THE TRANSFERABLE PATTERN — the format stripped of its content, as a fill-in-the-blank template.

Step 3: Apply the pattern, never the content

Using that transferable pattern, write 3 video concepts for my business: [what you do, audience]. Same mechanics — same hook style, same retention structure — but built entirely from my niche, my knowledge, my customers' problems. Flag which of the 3 fits the pattern most naturally.

Step 4: Build your pattern library

Analyze one video a week and keep every "transferable pattern" in a single doc. In three months you'll have a dozen proven skeletons — and you'll start recognizing them in the wild before videos blow up, which is the real skill.

Patterns are shared; scripts are not. Hook structures and formats are the grammar of the platform — free for everyone. Re-shooting someone's video with the nouns swapped is cloning, gets called out, and teaches you nothing.

Analyze your own hits too. When one of your posts over-performs, run it through the same prompt. Your best future content is usually hiding in your best past content.

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