Stop improvising. Ship outlines that hold viewers to the end.
Paste in your topic and target audience, get back a first-15-second hook, a 5-beat retention-paced outline, B-roll shot prompts, and a CTA strategy — formatted and ready to film against.
$3.99
Works in Claude + ChatGPT
01Writes your first 15 seconds word-for-word — the window where 30% of viewers decide to stay or leave.
02Builds a 5-beat outline with explicit retention cues so you know exactly when to drop a pattern interrupt.
03Generates B-roll prompts for every beat — no more staring at your timeline wondering what to cut to.
04Suggests a CTA strategy matched to your video topic, not just 'like and subscribe at the end'.
05Works for any niche: cooking, tech tutorials, personal finance, fitness — bring your topic, it handles the structure.
06Draws on a built-in retention psychology guide (loop mechanics, hook archetypes, pacing patterns) so the output isn't generic.
What it does
Most creators know their topic cold but wing the structure — and YouTube's analytics punish it. Audience retention graphs that cliff-dive at the 3-minute mark aren't a content problem, they're a pacing problem. This skill solves it.
Give it a topic and a one-sentence description of your audience. It comes back with a complete filming blueprint: a hook designed for the first 15 seconds, a 5-beat outline with built-in retention triggers at each transition, specific B-roll prompts you can hand to an editor or use yourself, and a CTA approach tailored to where the viewer is emotionally at the end of the video. The whole thing takes under two minutes and produces a document you can actually film against.
The skill runs on a bundled reference guide — retention-patterns.md — that encodes loop mechanics, pattern interrupt timing, hook archetypes, and B-roll writing conventions. That's the same framework creator coaches sell as $200 templates. You're not getting a fill-in-the-blank prompt; you're getting structured output informed by what actually keeps people watching.
Frequently asked
Does it write the full script or just the outline?
It produces a structured outline — hook, 5 beats with retention notes, B-roll prompts, and CTA strategy. It's designed to be what you film against, not a teleprompter script. If you want to expand any beat into full sentences, ask it to and it will.
I make videos in a pretty specific niche. Will this actually understand my audience?
You tell it who your audience is in plain language ('intermediate Python devs who hate padding' or 'busy parents in their 30s who cook maybe twice a week') and it uses that to tune the hook angle, the pacing beats, and the CTA. The more specific you are, the tighter the output.
Can't I just ask Claude or ChatGPT to outline a YouTube video for free?
You can, and you'll get something. What you won't get is output structured around first-15-second hook mechanics, 5-beat retention pacing, B-roll prompts per beat, and a CTA strategy — all in one pass, informed by a purpose-built retention reference. Generic prompts produce generic outlines. This is built for the specific job.
Does it work for videos shorter or longer than 8-12 minutes?
It's optimized for the 8-12 minute long-form format where retention pacing matters most. For a 20-minute deep dive, the structure still applies — you'd just expand the beats. For a 3-minute short, the framework is overkill and you'd be better served by a different tool.
Is this included in a subscription or is it a separate purchase?
This is a standard-tier skill priced at $3.99. Check your current plan to see if standard skills are included — if they are, you already have access.
Install
After purchase you'll get a license key. Then:
$ npx skilltree-network login # paste your license key