copywriting-hooks

The saved excerpt is a snapshot from review. The external source remains the complete and most current version.

---
name: copywriting-hooks
description: >
  Generate opening hooks and post titles for long-form articles in EN or FR — blog posts, Substack/Medium/dev.to, LinkedIn long-form, paid newsletters, opinion essays, reported features, technical deep-dives. Trigger whenever the user asks for a hook, opening, lede, intro, first sentence/paragraph, opener, accroche, attaque, phrase d'accroche, or première phrase — including making a flat intro punchier or rewriting a draft opening. Also trigger when user asks for a post title, titre d'article, headline, or when ghostwriting skills reach the opening or titling step. Proposes 3-4 hooks pulling distinct psychological levers (curiosity gap, contrarian, scene, promise, authority), 2 candidates each, waits for the user to pick. Do NOT trigger for social posts (LinkedIn feed, Twitter/X, TikTok, Bluesky, Threads), READMEs or doc first lines, taglines, email subjects or openers, ad copy (Google/Meta Ads), landing-page headlines, press releases, SEO meta, fiction openings, talk/podcast/video script intros, or body rewrites.


user-invocable: true
license: MIT
compatibility: Designed for Claude Code or similar AI coding agents.
metadata:
  author: samber
  version: "1.0.0"
  openclaw:
    emoji: "🪝"
    homepage: https://github.com/samber/cc-skills
allowed-tools: Read Edit Write Glob Grep Agent
---

# Copywriting Hooks

## The method

A hook's only job is to make the reader want sentence 2. Voice, structure, formatting, all of it, follow from that one job.

What makes a reader want sentence 2 is one of **five levers**:

1. **Open a gap.** Pose something incomplete that the reader needs to close. Curiosity gap, question, open loop.
2. **Break a prediction.** State something that violates the reader's prior. Contrarian, definition reversal, surprising statistic.
3. **Drop into a scene.** Load sensory or specific detail that builds a vivid frame. In medias res, concrete detail, time anchor.
4. **Promise a payoff.** Name an outcome the reader wants. Benefit, "if you... then this", direct problem.
5. **Borrow weight.** Lean on a name, number, or quote that carries embedded authority. Authority hook, statistic, quote with disagreement.

A strong hook usually pulls two levers at once. "Frank Sinatra, holding a glass of bourbon..." is scene plus open loop. "Most people think X. They're wrong." is prediction-break plus gap. Single-lever hooks can still work but are easier to ignore.

Three further principles:

- **Specific beats abstract every time.** Replace "many companies" with "Stripe, Shopify, Vercel". Replace "recently" with a date. Replace "studies show" with the actual finding or cut the claim.
- **The first sentence must force the second.** Read each candidate cold. If you would not click sentence 2 after sentence 1, rewrite.
- **Match technique to article type.** Personal essay does not open like a tutorial. See the type-fit table below.

---

## Behavior

When this skill triggers:

1. **Confirm the brief.** Topic, audience, target language (EN, FR, or both), approximate length, where it will be published. If any of these is unclear and material, ask before generating.
2. **Pick 3 to 4 hooks from the catalog** below that are genuinely different. Different levers, not three flavors of contrarian.
3. **Write 2 candidates per hook**, specific to the user's article. The two candidates within one hook should explore different angles (different anecdote, different statistic, different scene), not be rewordings of each other.
4. **Present using the Output format** below.
5. **Use `ask_user_input_v0`** if available. The choice is a small fixed set, which is what that tool is for.
6. **Wait for the user's pick.** Do not pick for them.
7. **After they pick**, name what the choice commits the rest of the article to. A contrarian hook commits paragraphs 2 to 3 to defending the non-consensus claim. A scene opener commits the next section to either resolving the scene or productively delaying it.

**Diversi