A Short cut out of a long video is not a clip of the best moment. It is a moment that survives without the video around it, which is a much smaller set.
Picking
Read the transcript and find spans of 20-55 seconds where all three are true:
- It opens on a complete thought. If the first sentence needs the previous minute, it is not a Short.
- There is a turn in it - a claim, then something that complicates or proves it.
- It ends on a line, not a trail-off.
Rank the candidates and show the user the top five with their timecodes and first line, so they can reject one without reading the whole transcript.
Writing each one
- A NEW first line. The long video's line assumes context this viewer does not have. Write the
replacement and run it through
../yt-script/hookscore.py. - On-screen text for the first two seconds, different words from the spoken line.
- A loop point: what the last line sets up so the first line answers it.
- Vertical framing note - what gets cropped out of a 16:9 frame and whether that matters.
The gate
Nothing here publishes. This skill writes and you publish. Every output ends in a block the user copies, and the last line of every run is the question: ship it, or change it?