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spy

Marketing & growth

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Updated 10-16 03:19

About this skill

/spy

Instant competitive hook intelligence. Give it Instagram handles — it scrapes their content, finds viral outliers, transcribes the hooks, templatizes them, and shows you exactly what's working in any niche. Zero setup, no database required.

Usage

/spy @handle1 @handle2 @handle3 /spy https://www.instagram.com/handle1/ https://www.instagram.com/handle2/

Examples:

  • /spy @hormozi @garyvee @danmartell
  • /spy @levelsio @marc_louvion @yaboroda_

Minimum 2 handles, maximum 10.

Step 0 — First-Time Setup

Check if config exists at ~/.claude/skills/spy/config.json.

If config exists: Load tool paths from it. Skip to Step 1.

If config does NOT exist:

Welcome to /spy! Let me check your tools real quick. This only happens once.

Check Apify MCP

Try calling mcp__apify__search-actors with query "instagram".

  • If it works: "Apify connected."
  • If it fails: 
    Apify is not connected. To set it up:
1. Create a free account at https://apify.com
2. Go to Settings → Integrations and copy your API token
3. Exit Claude Code (type /exit)
4. Run: claude mcp add apify -- npx -y @anthropic-ai/apify-mcp-server
5. When prompted, paste your API token
6. Reopen Claude Code and run /spy again
    Stop here until Apify is connected.

Check CLI Tools

YT_DLP=$(which yt-dlp 2>/dev/null)
WHISPER=$(which whisper 2>/dev/null)
FFMPEG=$(which ffmpeg 2>/dev/null)

For each missing tool:

  • yt-dlp: "Run: pip3 install yt-dlp"
  • whisper: "Run: pip3 install openai-whisper"
  • ffmpeg: "Run: brew install ffmpeg (Mac) or sudo apt install ffmpeg (Linux)"

Stop here until all tools are installed.

Save Config

{
  "toolPaths": {
    "ytDlp": "/path/from/which",
    "whisper": "/path/from/which",
    "ffmpeg": "/path/from/which"
  },
  "setupComplete": true,
  "setupDate": "YYYY-MM-DD"
}

Then proceed.

Step 1 — Parse Handles

Extract Instagram handles from the input. Accept formats:

  • @handle
  • handle
  • https://www.instagram.com/handle/
  • https://www.instagram.com/handle/reels/

Strip everything down to just the handle (no @, no URL).

Step 2 — Scrape via Apify

Use apify/instagram-scraper to scrape each handle:

  • resultsType: "posts"
  • resultsLimit: 50
  • Batch handles in groups of 5-6

For each post, extract: ownerUsername, url, videoViewCount, likesCount, commentsCount, timestamp, caption, type

Filter to VIDEO posts only (reels). Ignore carousels and images for this analysis.

Step 3 — Calculate Outliers

For each handle:

  1. Calculate median views from all posts returned (up to 50)
  2. Find posts with 5x+ median views — these are the outliers
  3. Also note the top 3 posts by views even if they're not technically 5x (in case the account is consistently high)

Filter to last 30 days only for outlier candidates.

Print a quick summary:

Scraping complete:
  @handle1: 42 posts, median 12K, found 3 outliers (5x+)
  @handle2: 38 posts, median 8K, found 5 outliers (5x+)
  @handle3: 29 posts, median 3K, found 7 outliers (5x+)

Total outliers to process: 15

Step 4 — Process Each Outlier

For each outlier, in order of views (highest first). Max 20 outliers.

4a. Download

$YT_DLP "[url]" -o /tmp/spy_reel.mp4 --merge-output-format mp4 -q

Use the yt-dlp path from config.json.

4b. Transcribe (spoken hook)

$WHISPER /tmp/spy_reel.mp4 --model base --output_format txt --output_dir /tmp/ --fp16 False

Extract the first 1-3 sentences as the spoken hook.

4c. Screenshot (on-screen text hook)

$FFMPEG -i /tmp/spy_reel.mp4 -vframes 1 -ss 00:00:01 /tmp/spy_thumb.png -y

Read the screenshot with vision to extract the on-screen text hook.

4d. Caption hook

Extract the first 1-2 sentences of the post caption as the caption hook.

4e. Analyze & Templatize

For each outlier, generate:

  • Spoken hook template — abstract the spoken hook into [BRACKET] framework
  • On-screen text template — abstract the on-screen text into [BRACKET] framework
  • Caption template — abstract the caption hook into [BRACKET] framework
  • Hook type — classify: Tool Discovery, Replace + Kill Claim, Viewer Callout, Speed Tutorial, Framework, Contrarian, Comparison, Fear/Warning, Controversy/News, Listicle, POV/Meme, Raw Energy, Absurd Escalation, etc.
  • Why it works — 1-2 sentence psychological analysis

4f. Clean up

rm -f /tmp/spy_reel.mp4 /tmp/spy_reel.txt /tmp/spy_thumb.png

Step 5 — Display Results

Summary Stats

╔══════════════════════════════════════════╗
║  SPY REPORT — [N] outliers from [N]     ║
║  accounts in the [NICHE] niche          ║
╚══════════════════════════════════════════╝

Accounts analyzed: [N]
Total posts scanned: [N]
Outliers found (5x+): [N]
Top hook type: [TYPE] ([N] occurrences)

For each outlier, show a card:

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
#1 — @handle (1.2M views, 70.7x outlier)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

🎙️ SPOKEN HOOK:
"Here are five secret codes for Claude."

📱 ON-SCREEN TEXT:
"Secret Codes for Claude 😳"

📝 CAPTION:
"Comment 'Codes' and I'll send you 100 more 👇"

🧩 TEMPLATES:
  Spoken:    Here are [NUMBER] secret codes for [TOOL]
  On-screen: Secret Codes for [TOOL] [EMOJI]
  Caption:   Comment '[KEYWORD]' and I'll send you [NUMBER] more

🏷️ Type: Listicle / Secret Codes
💡 Why: "Secret codes" implies hidden insider knowledge.
        Numbered list promises quick scannable value.

🔗 https://www.instagram.com/p/xxxxx/

After all outliers, show the Template Leaderboard:

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
TOP TEMPLATES (ranked by total views)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

1. [TOOL] just killed [PROFESSION]
   Used by: @creator1, @creator2, @creator3
   Combined: 1.2M views across 4 posts
   Works for: Reels ✓  Carousels ✓

2. Here are [NUMBER] secret codes for [TOOL]
   Used by: @creator1
   Combined: 1.4M views across 2 posts
   Works for: Reels ✓  Carousels ✓

Mark each template as carousel-friendly or not:

  • ✓ Carousel: Replace + Kill Claim, Listicle, Framework, Tool Discovery, Viewer Callout, Comparison, Don't Say / Instead Say
  • ✗ Carousel: POV/Meme, Comment Reply, Speed Tutorial Rapid Steps, Contrarian rants, Celebrity/News, Raw Energy

Step 6 — Offer Next Steps

After showing results, ask:

"Want me to:

  1. Save these to a file — markdown report you can reference later
  2. Set up full tracking — install /hook-intel for weekly auto-refresh + database
  3. Generate scripts — pick a template and I'll write a script using it in your voice"

Important Rules

  • This skill is READ-ONLY — it never saves to any database. Output only.
  • Process max 20 outliers — if there are more, take the top 20 by views
  • Always show all three hook versions — spoken, on-screen, caption. The spoken hook is the most important, on-screen text is second, caption is last.
  • Don't skip meme/POV posts — include them but note they're "high views, low follow conversion"
  • Detect the niche automatically — look at the content angles across all outliers and identify the common thread

Built by @tenfoldmarc. Follow for daily AI automation builds — real systems, not theory.