Hooks for a product with nothing to show: text and voice carry the first 3 s
For an API, a CLI, a service, a habit, anything without a screen worth filming: five hook shapes built on a typed line, a number and a voice, and what goes on screen instead of the product.
Write 5 hooks for a short video about {product or idea}, which has no visual to show (no interface, no physical object, or an interface that is a wall of text). The hook has to be carried by on-screen text and a voice, so every hook is written twice: the TEXT line (max 7 words, on screen from frame 1) and the VOICE line (max 14 words, said over it). They are not the same words; the text is the claim, the voice is the detail. What is on screen instead of the product, pick one per hook and name it: a face talking (closest to the phone, eye level); a terminal or a plain text editor with the line being typed live; a number counting on a plain background; an object that stands for the problem (a stopwatch, a stack of paper, a receipt); a hand writing the text line on paper. Shapes to fill: - Number-first: TEXT '{number} {unit}', VOICE the sentence that explains the number. - Pain moment: TEXT the moment in 5 words, VOICE the second person scene. - Typed claim: TEXT typed live, letter by letter, VOICE silent until the last word, then one line. - Before/after in words: TEXT 'before: {state}' then 'after: {state}' as two cards, VOICE the time between them. - Question: TEXT the question, VOICE the answer's first half only. Return: 5 hooks, each with TEXT, VOICE, WHAT IS ON SCREEN, and the second at which the first concrete detail of the product is spoken (it must be before 8 s).
In Claude Code, paste the prompt as a message.
Example
Product: a command-line tool that renames and sorts a folder of phone videos by shooting date.
- Number-first. TEXT: ‘1,400 clips, 0 names’. VOICE: ‘Every clip on my phone is called IMG and a number. Fourteen hundred of them.’ On screen: a plain Finder list scrolling, all IMG_. Product detail at 6 s: ‘one command reads the shooting date and renames them all.’
- Pain moment. TEXT: ‘which one is the wedding’. VOICE: ‘You know the one. Four hundred clips from one weekend, and the toast is in there somewhere.’ On screen: a hand scrolling a grid of identical thumbnails. Detail at 7 s.
- Typed claim. TEXT typed live: ‘sort 1,400 videos: one line’. VOICE at the last word: ‘This is the line.’ On screen: a terminal, the command appears, Enter. Detail at 3 s.
- Before/after in words. TEXT card 1: ‘before: IMG_4471.MOV’. Card 2: ‘after: 2026-06-14 wedding 031.mov’. VOICE: ‘Eleven seconds between those two.’ On screen: the two cards on black. Detail at 5 s.
- Question. TEXT: ‘where did June go?’. VOICE: ‘Every June clip is in one folder now, and I did not open an editor.’ On screen: a face, then a cut to a folder called 2026-06. Detail at 4 s.
Tips
- Typing the text live on screen is the cheapest motion there is, and motion in frame 1 is what stops the frame reading as a photo.
- The first concrete detail of the product is spoken by 8 s or the video is about a feeling. A detail is a number, a filename, a command, a before and after.
| works with | Claude Code: Runs as a skill or a prompt in the terminal; can read your files and write the result. · Claude: Paste into claude.ai or the Claude app. · ChatGPT: Paste into ChatGPT; works with any GPT model. · Any LLM: Model-agnostic: Gemini, Mistral, a local model. |
| cost | Free. No API, no key. |
| status | Unverified: written from the technique, not yet run end to end by us. |
| license | CC BY 4.0 for the text here; skills are MIT. |
| updated | 2026-11-01 |
| for agents | hooks-for-product-with-no-visuals.md |
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