Speaker A
Today we're talking about hooks. If you want your videos to perform better, the most valuable thing you could do is build a hook writing system. This is a framework and process for writing killer hooks every single time.
Kallaway introduces the 'Hook Machine,' a free AI workflow using Claude and Sandcastles MCP to analyze top-performing social hooks and generate new, persuasive hooks for any niche.
Key Takeaways
- Generic AI prompts produce weak hooks; grounding AI in real performance data is essential.
- Copy-pasting hooks across niches usually fails because psychological and format differences do not transfer.
- Confident declarative hooks tend to outperform hedged questions in short-form video.
- A reusable hook format library and generation engine can be built from analyzed competitor and own-channel data.
What the video covers
- The speaker argues that a hook-writing system is the most valuable way to improve video performance.
- Cold AI prompts like 'write me hooks' produce generic, uncompelling results because LLMs are not optimized for short-form social media data without extensive training.
- Copy-pasting viral hooks across niches usually fails because the psychology and format do not translate.
- The proposed solution is the 'Hook Machine,' a four-step process combining social data with storytelling principles.
- Setup requires a Sandcastles account (Pro tier) and connecting it to Claude via the Sandcastles MCP, which takes about two minutes once configured.
- The Claude desktop app is required to run Co-Work or Code for the workflow.
- The workflow starts by supplying the user's own channel and several competitor channels for analysis.
- The system segments hooks into winners and losers based on performance and analyzes transcripts and hook structures.
- Findings include: confident declarative statements outperform hedged questions, and winning hooks often use specific amplifiers in the opening sentences.
- The output includes a reusable hook format library, a hook generation engine that writes new hooks from any topic, and the ability to save the workflow as a skill.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction to Hook Writing Systems
- 01:54Why Generic AI Hook Writing Fails
- 03:34Setting Up the Sandcastles MCP
- 05:08Adding Channels for Analysis
- 06:39Sorting Winning and Losing Hooks
- 09:17Identifying Hook Patterns and Principles
- 11:56Generating New Hooks and Format Library
- 23:03Evaluating and Refining Outputs
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
created some of the most popular hook trainings on the internet. I've literally studied thousands of the top performing videos. And I've personally done billions of views and racked up over a million followers just because my hookw writing was so dialed. But the
Speaker A
Now, look, I've created some of the most popular hook trainings on the internet. I've literally studied thousands of the top performing videos. And I've personally done billions of views and racked up over a million followers just because my hook writing was so dialed.
Speaker A
call it the hook machine. It's an AI workflow that combines data and advanced storytelling principles to help you write winning hooks every single time.
Speaker A
But the problem is getting all that hook knowledge into one AI workflow that actually works for everyone has been pretty tough. The good news is I think I finally figured it out, and I'm going to give it away for free in this video. I call it the Hook Machine. It's an AI workflow that combines data and advanced storytelling principles to help you write winning hooks every single time.
Speaker A
me just explain why AI hookw writing doesn't usually work. It's actually very simple. When you write hooks with AI, the LLMs just aren't optimized for short form social data. Unless you train them extensively, they just don't understand how to write persuasively for social
Speaker A
So in this video, I'm going to walk through how the Hook Machine works, why it works so well, and the exact step-by-step workflow that you can use to implement it today. All right, let's dive in.
Speaker A
They always just end up sounding super generic and never compelling. Now, most people have accepted that, but instead they try the copypaste method where they take a super viral hook from a creator all the way in this niche and they try
Speaker A
Now, before I do anything, let me just explain why AI hook writing doesn't usually work. It's actually very simple. When you write hooks with AI, the LLMs just aren't optimized for short-form social data. Unless you train them extensively, they just don't understand how to write persuasively for social media.
Speaker A
format crossover doesn't work well. I mean, even the grammar usually isn't working when you copy paste it. And yet all these people try these straight copypaste hook clones because all the fake gurus told them to. So what is the
Speaker A
This is why when you dump your topic into a cold AI chat and say, "Write me hooks," it ends up horrible. They always just end up sounding super generic and never compelling.
Speaker A
actually works every time. By the way, I'm also just giving you the prompt and the skill file linked below. It's free so you can have that. you can grab that ripet and claw and you'll be good to go.
Speaker A
Now, most people have accepted that, but instead they try the copy-paste method, where they take a super viral hook from a creator all the way in this niche and they try to copy-paste it and apply it to their niche. But here's the funny thing. When you do these crazy copy-paste jobs from one niche all the way over to the other, they usually don't work either, because the psychology doesn't translate. The format crossover doesn't work well. I mean, even the grammar usually isn't working when you copy-paste it. And yet all these people try these straight copy-paste hook clones because all the fake gurus told them to.
Speaker A
Without the MCP, you can't pipe the social data in. We can't deep analyze the videos. We can't run the data loop.
Speaker A
So what is the real way to use AI but actually solve the hook problem? The solve, in my opinion, is the Hook Machine. The Hook Machine is my four-step process that combines data with storytelling principles to give you the best chance at writing an original hook that actually works every time.
Speaker A
All right. The next step is that we need to set up the Sand Castle's MCP. You have the Sand Castle's account and you have Claude, but we have to build a pipe connecting them so that we can automatically tell Sand Castles to do
Speaker A
By the way, I'm also just giving you the prompt and the skill file linked below. It's free, so you can have that. You can grab that right now and Claude, and you'll be good to go.
Speaker A
description help.sandcastle.ai/MCP. It takes 2 minutes to set it up. Very easy to follow the instructions, but you need to make sure you follow that and set this up before you move forward. Go ahead and pause this video and get the
Speaker A
Now, I want to go through a live example and show you exactly how I use this and see it come to life. So, the very first step before you can make this work, you need to have a Sandcastles account. Without the MCP, you can't pipe the social data in. We can't deep analyze the videos. We can't run the data loop. Everything kind of breaks. So, step number one, you have to have a Sandcastles account. There's a link below if you want to join. I'm going to assume moving forward that you do have at least a Sandcastles Pro account.
Speaker A
sick. All right, so now we're in Claude and we're going to go through a live demo of the hook machine. This is like my favorite workflow I've ever built. So we're going to do is you're going to copy paste in the prompt that I have
Speaker A
All right. The next step is that we need to set up the Sandcastles MCP. You have the Sandcastles account and you have Claude, but we have to build a pipe connecting them so that we can automatically tell Sandcastles to do stuff from Claude. Now, if you've already set up the Sandcastles MCP, because you only have to do it once, go ahead and skip to the next section. If you haven't set it up, I put together a video that I've linked in the description: help.sandcastle.ai/mcp. It takes two minutes to set up. It's very easy to follow the instructions, but you need to make sure you follow that and set this up before you move forward. Go ahead and pause this video, get the MCP set up, and then come back and keep watching.
Speaker A
desktop app. You need to be on the desktop app in order to run co-work or code. So, here we go. We've got this prompt. We're going to paste it in and let it rip. Okay. So, what you're going
Speaker A
All right, so at this point in the video, I'm going to assume everybody has a Sandcastles at least Pro subscription and has the MCP set up. Now we're good to go. This is going to be sick.
Speaker A
hook machine by Callaway. Here's what I'm going to do. You're going to give me social channels, and I'm going to do three things for you. I'm going to build a hook format library." This is a bonus.
Speaker A
All right, so now we're in Claude, and we're going to go through a live demo of the Hook Machine. This is my favorite workflow I've ever built. What we're going to do is copy-paste in the prompt that I have linked below in the description. I'm going to copy-paste that in as well. I'm going to use Co-Work. What you see is the desktop app for Claude. If you're not on the desktop app, go to claude.com/download and download the desktop app. You need to be on the desktop app in order to run Co-Work or Code.
Speaker A
bad hooks. Then it's going to build a hook generation engine where you can drop in any topic and it will write new hooks for you. So, what we're going to do is just to keep it quick, we're going
Speaker A
So, here we go. We've got this prompt. We're going to paste it in and let it rip. Okay. So, if you're not really familiar with Claude, what you're going to see is it's going to build in the progress tab up in the upper right. It's going to build the flow in a minute, but first it's going to tee this up. So it says, "I'm the Hook Machine by Callaway. Here's what I'm going to do. You're going to give me social channels, and I'm going to do three things for you. I'm going to build a hook format library." This is a bonus. It's just going to list all the top-performing hooks with the Mad Lib for you. You can export and save that out just as a bonus. It's going to create that personalized grading rubric, which is how it evaluates good versus bad hooks. Then it's going to build a hook generation engine where you can drop in any topic and it will write new hooks for you.
Speaker A
And I'm just doing this cuz I don't want to waste any credits or grab any hooks that are like about a a personal vlog that's like not on topic for me. Okay.
Speaker A
So what we're going to do, just to keep it quick, is do the top 10 videos from me as well as three other competitors. We're going to grab the top 10 videos from these channels. And I'm going to say ignore any videos about personal life that are not related to the topic. I'm just doing this because I don't want to waste any credits or grab any hooks that are about a personal vlog that's not on topic for me.
Speaker A
Then I'm going to grab three competitors. I'm going to do Peter Visuals. This guy's faceless. I don't know who this is, but pretty impressive.
Speaker A
So, first I'm going to grab my own channel. We've got that here, and I'm just going to paste it in right here. Then I'm going to grab three competitors. I'm going to do Peter Visuals. This guy's faceless. I don't know who this is, but pretty impressive. I know he watches my stuff, so he's probably going to see this bonus footage. New guy, growing fast. I like this guy's vibe. And then we're going to do Brier, the homie.
Speaker A
hook analysis, you may want to run this flow just on you alone because that's really the way to get the best data is like just you. But you can also run it with other people as well. And that's
Speaker A
Now, all these are different styles, right? When you do hook analysis, you may want to run this flow just on you alone, because that's really the way to get the best data. But you can also run it with other people as well, and that's why we segment the analysis out across the different people: Brier's style is a little different, the bonus footage is a little different than mine. So the hook's rhythm may not be what I want. But we'll see.
Speaker A
So it's like the hooks rhythm may not be what I want. But we'll see. So here we go. This is going to analyze 40 videos in total. 10 per channel times four channels, which is what I said. That's
Speaker A
So here we go. This is going to analyze 40 videos in total: 10 per channel times four channels, which is what I said. That's 40 credits, roughly 10 minutes of processing time. Now, if you already have some of these processed on the back end, which I do, it'll tell you on the next step, oh, we didn't actually have to run 40 credits. It was all good because you already spent the credits before. So it's not going to double-charge you.
Speaker A
you already spent the credits before. So it's not going to double charge you. One last thing, and this is really important. Do you want me to include all the videos or screen out any brand deals? Typically, any video with below a
Speaker A
One last thing, and this is really important. Do you want me to include all the videos or screen out any brand deals? Typically, any video with below a 2% engagement rate, that's a high performer, has paid spend behind it, and that will artificially inflate the video and give you a false sense of what will work. We like to screen these out by default. Are you okay with that? Of course I am. I wrote the rules. Yes, screen out brand deals.
Speaker A
course I am. I wrote the rules. Yes. Screen out brand deals. And then, just to confirm, you said ignore any videos about personal life. The topic here, da da da. Is that right? And we'll say yes.
Speaker A
And then, just to confirm, you said ignore any videos about personal life, the topic here, da da da. Is that right? And we'll say yes. Let's let it rip.
Speaker A
channels in the Sand Castle's database, add them to your watch list so we can run this. Any channel you give, we can do this for. There's going to be no lag.
Speaker A
So now what it's going to do is go and find out whether you have those channels in your watch list.
Speaker A
four of these people are in there. And so you can see what it's doing is it's looking, do I need to add any of these people to the watch list? It likely won't. All four channels are already in
Speaker A
your watch list. Now pulling top videos from each. So this Sandcastle MCP is magic. I've mentioned this before already. If you've used Appify to try to like lightweight connect your social media, you see all those people on TikTok that are like, I built a social
Speaker A
media marketing engine using Cloud. Like what they really said is they connected via Apify and they were able to scrape the metrics and like the captions and it's actually very surface level. It's good for like ranking the videos that
Speaker A
are doing the best, which we can obviously do for free, but you're not getting any deep analysis. So, what this does is all that stuff that you're paying Apify for, we give it to you for free. Unlimited for free. The scraping,
Speaker A
the metrics, the captions, all for free. What we charge credits for is the deep analysis. We're doing advanced processing with the transcript, the idea, the topic, the hook format, the storytelling format, the visual layout, all the metrics, everything we're doing
Speaker A
advanced, as much as you could do. That's a credit per video. And so, if you've set up Ampify, this will blow your mind what this can do. So, as I mentioned in the upper right, the progress, the way Claude works is it
Speaker A
starts to build this kind of like project plan for you. So, you can see it's already added the four channels to the watch list. Now, it's pulling the top 10 videos per channel. It's going to make sure all the videos are qualifiers,
Speaker A
right? So, if any are about personal background or any of them are off topic, it's going to screen those out. If any are paid brand deals, it'll screen those out. Then, it's going to go and sort the top 10 by person. So, it's not going to
Speaker A
mash all 40 together. It's going to go list of 10. We want to keep them segmented. As I mentioned, the hook styles are kind of different per person.
Speaker A
So, we're going to keep them segmented. And then it will delineate a line. The ones above that line are winners. The one below those lines are losers. And so, it's going to try to figure out like where are the winning hooks within the
Speaker A
top 10 videos. Is there a break point that we find like super winners? And it's going to go through that process and then the rest. Now, the cool thing about the Sandcastle's MCP is that it has access to all these different tools.
Speaker A
So, I believe there's 24 different tools that are baked into the MCP. So right here you can see it's hitting the channel recap. We also have the analyze tool which it'll be using. That's the tool that we actually run the analysis
Speaker A
via Sand Castles to Claude. We also have the credit tool. We have the hooks tool.
Speaker A
We have a format tool. There's there's so many tools, right? So it's giving us an update now that says the Callaway Marketing 10, the Peter visuals and Brier 10 have been analyzed. The bonus footage is the only one with gaps. So
Speaker A
it's completing those now. So you can see it's firing the analysis tool right here. It's concurrently analyzing all six of the remaining bonus footage videos. So, it's already has 34 done. If you already have the videos analyzed on
Speaker A
the Sand Castle's web side, this will be extremely quickly. Any ones it has to fill the gap for, it'll take about 1 to 2 minutes per video and it's running those concurrently. So, this should take about another minute. One other tip for
Speaker A
anyone doing this, if the analyze process takes a long time because you're pulling a bunch of videos that have not been analyzed, you can always go into the Sand Castle's web app and you can manually analyze or bulk analyze the
Speaker A
videos you want. it's faster in the web app and then you can export that data into a CSV and drop that in here which will actually save you some time on this first analysis piece. So you kind of
Speaker A
have two ways of doing it. The analysis is just faster in the web app than it would be through the data pipe cuz I has to keep going back and forth. So now we're moving to the next step which is
Speaker A
sorting the winners and losers. You can see in the upper right we've got three done. We're now sorting. So if we go down here's the top 10 that it took from me and it's identified some as winners and some as losers. And the reason or
Speaker A
the way it did that was it noted a natural break point in the views between video four and five. And so what it's saying is number 1 2 3 4 those are big bangers that we should analyze the hook
Speaker A
for. The rest were not breakouts relative to the others. So it did that for my videos. And then for every other channel it does it for break it out as well. So for Peter Visuals there are five with a clear break point. For bonus
Speaker A
footage there are four. Although he's a bit smaller. So you can see like four or five. These are these are kind of similar. So you can change the delineation point in a second, but for what it did, it did the top four. And
Speaker A
then for Brier, it also pulled four. There's a clear break point. So content is just like anything else. It's 8020, right? So typically there's going to be a few videos that are huge bangers that drive a majority of the growth. Those
Speaker A
are the ones that we want to study and extract the principles out of. So if we scroll down now, it's asking us, okay, it did the summary. It screened out paid videos, which like Peter visuals, gamma post, 0% engagement, clear clear paid
Speaker A
videos. So, it's screened that out because we don't want to evaluate that hook or value it too highly if it's actually a mid-performer that was just boosted. So, now it's saying, do you want to adjust the win or loser line?
Speaker A
I'm going to keep what it did because all of them except for maybe bonus footage look good. So, we'll say keep the line. We'll move to the next piece.
Speaker A
So, now that it's keeping the line, what it's going to do is it's going to analyze all the ones above the line and it's going to try to find the core principles for why those hooks did well.
Speaker A
It's going to first do them separately. one for me, one for Brier, one for bonus footage, one for Peter visuals. And then it's going to see, are there any core principles or pillars that are the same across all of us? Those are a great sign
Speaker A
to combine with kind of the universal principles. So that's what it's doing now is it's trying to evaluate all of these. Now, it already has the transcript, the hook, it already did all the analysis. So now it's just running
Speaker A
the meta analysis on top of the data that we have in here. All right, so here we go. Now it's starting to run through the analysis for each person. So, what it's doing is it's looking for a couple
Speaker A
different buckets. It's looking for psychology takeaways, trigger words and framing takeaways, grammatical takeaways, and then non-obvious takeaways. It's going to do that for each person, and then it's going to combine comprehensive insights across.
Speaker A
So, for me, for example, these were the four it looked at. It said these were the six kind of losers. For on the psychology front, it says winners attach a concrete outcome to a constrained input. For example, 30 days of content
Speaker A
in 30 minutes. Losers lean on series branding without a standalone value promise inside the first sentence. So it's like okay on the psychology front, winners versus losers. Trigger words versus framing. Winners use actually everyday crushing right now easiest.
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Losers are using vague superlatives. On the grammatical structure, winners are declarative and frontload the payoff.
Speaker A
That's actually a really interesting insight. Here's how to here's how to do X and Y versus the losers which are kind of delaying the takeaway and they have no identity. So here's a pattern. When Callaway names a specific outcome, the
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video wins. When he leans on episode branding alone, it syncs 50%. Like, that's a very insightful takeaway just on mine alone. And this only analyzed four videos. Imagine if you just did your own and you ripped 50 videos and
Speaker A
you had it run all 50. The amount of rigor in the analysis would be pretty insane. Now, let's look at Peter visuals. Took these five. The psychology. Peter's entire framework is case study as content. The hook is the
Speaker A
stat, but not all stats win equally. Winners pair the stat with a second sentence amplifier, like a comparison or contrarian reframe. The losers state the stat and stop. So like right away I'm like, "Okay, that's pretty clear." Every
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single one of his videos is this case study format, but it's working super well when he adds this kind of amplifier on the top or on the second sentence.
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Trigger words and framing. He uses magnitude language and like the like counts as additional proof points. The exact numbers that he use matter. 90 to 120 million outperforms 19 to 40. So bigger evidence is better. That's pretty intuitive, but like clear that it
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confirmed it. Then it goes through the grammatical structure. Here's an anti pattern. Audio clip openers where the video opens with reference videos clip instead of his framing. These underperform by roughly 60%. Again, very insightful, not obvious. And this is not
Speaker A
the type of thing you would get from scraping off the top. You need the actual transcript and the the visual analysis to be able to get this deep.
Speaker A
So, it does that for him. I'm not going to go through all these just to save you guys time, but bonus footage. It's going to do the same thing here. Briar, it's going to do the same thing here for him.
Speaker A
You could do this for every single competitor that you have. Now, it's going to move to the cross channel synthesis. We didn't read all these, but I bet if you read every single one of these, you'd be like, "Oh, okay. It's
Speaker A
kind of common that across these three people, they seem to do the same thing psychologically." Right? So, now what it's doing is it's going to look for any common attributes across all four. And what it's assuming is all of these
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people are close competitors. And so, you actually want some similarity, like you want to find if there is a a similar attribute that you can use. So, here we go. So it says after running the channels independently here are the
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patterns that show up in two or more of the channels. First is specificity beats abstraction. All four channels show when spec when you're specific it works better. Good insight. Number two the two sentence amplifier structure appears both in Peter visuals and me and
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somewhat brier. So it's like you state something and then you give an amplifier in the second sentence. I tend to do that a lot. Peter does that a lot. It's noticing that commonality. Number three, avoid throat clearing openers. Brier
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plus bonus footage plus Callaway all show this. You're not like wasting time or delaying the value. Pretty interesting. And then here's a few others. Confident declaratives beat hedged questions. Brier, Callaway, Peter all confirm. Winners say things are losers ask questions. So again, these
Speaker A
are all like really compelling and interesting insights that I would not have known right off the rip. I can kind of gauge my own stuff, but comparing it to others, this is what an LLM is really designed for. So there's a couple
Speaker A
others. Here's some divergences where we do different things. Okay, cool. So now what we did is we're taking the universal principles. These are the eight principles that I believe to be true when it comes to hook storytelling that just crush every time. If you've
Speaker A
watched a lot of my videos, you'll recognize most of these. These are common attributes that tend to be true.
Speaker A
Then we're adding on the custom principles that we've extracted from this data. Now, if we would have pulled 50 videos from each of these channels, all four of these channels, maybe this would have slightly changed. If we would
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have pulled other channels, this would have definitely changed. If we would have pulled just my channels, this would have changed. So, you can run this a bunch of times to get different variations of your hook rubric, the greater. And you're going to use that to
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write different hooks. So, this can be a oneandone if you analyze a bunch of videos, but it doesn't have to be a oneanddone is my point. And so, look at how many kind of universal principles we're adding just from this. Okay, cool.
Speaker A
So, that's the rubric. Eight principles, 11 custom principles with sources tagged. If anything looks off, we say so. If not, we say let's continue. So, I'm going to say continue.
Speaker A
All right. So, now we're continuing from here. And so, first, what it's going to do is it's going to build a library of all the winning hooks. This is just like a bonus takeaway. Like, you don't even need this for the hook machine, but I
Speaker A
just included it because if you want to summarize all the ones you just analyzed via the credits, it has that here, right? So, for me, it's like here's one video, the original hook, the format, second video, original hook, format, and
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you could just copy this. You could drop this into a different chat, save this as a skill. You could export this, upload this somewhere else. Right? So, you've got all of the hooks that you just analyzed right here. Mine, Peter,
Speaker A
visuals, bonus footage, Brier, they're all here. That's just a bonus, like I said. Now, where we're at here is it's time to write a topic. And so, the whole point of this is that you want to build a hook machine that you can just write
Speaker A
any topic and it will give you winning hooks. And it will use some of the data, some of these proven formats, and it will write its own using those principles. So, let's just do a hook example. So, I'm going to say I want to
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make a video about this concept, dopamine ladders. This explains the six levels of dopamine that get released when someone watches a video. This is how you make people addicted to content. Let's just say like this is a topic that I want to make a
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video about. This is a unique topic I validated. I'm like, I want to make a video about this. Boom. So, I add that topic in there. Now, you can add a lot more research if you wanted just for the
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brevity of this and like to show the simplistic workflow. I'm like, okay, I'm just going to drop like a couple thoughts, couple sentences. So, now it's going to write me hooks about this idea of dopamine ladders. What it's going to
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do is it's going to give me up to five hooks per person. So, five for me, five for Brier, five for bonus footage, and five from Peter Visuals based on the winning hook formats. Now, it's not going to do five if there's only two
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that won, right? Right? So, it's only it's going to go up to five based on the ones that actually analyzed. That's why more videos is better. It's going to give me all of those. Now, it's not just going to copy paste the format. It's
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going to take the format and reskin it using our principles to write it close but not exactly. It's also going to only pick the winning formats that match this type of topic. So, it's intuitive enough to know, well, this is kind of like a
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theoretical psychology concept. So, if there's a random hook format that's about stats or a case study, it's not going to be a match. So, we shouldn't even use it. So, it's going to rule out some of those as well. So, it's going to
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give you a list based on each of the channels, and then it's going to write its own list of five that I find are typically the best. So, usually it's like your own channel. It's going to give good ones. The originals are going
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to be good ones. And then it's hit or miss depending on the channels that you actually pull because like I said, Brier, bonus footage, these guys yap and so they're more long-winded and I tend to be a little bit tighter and I don't
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want to have these like rambly hooks. Not in like a bad way. They just talk with more words per sentence. So, those might not be a fit for me. So, let's just see what it comes up with. So, here
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we go. Right away it's saying heads up. Peter Visuals library is mostly case study stat. Dopamine ladders is a conceptual framework with no external stat. So four of his five formats fail at the compatibility screening. So it's not going to give me examples. And I
Speaker A
actually like that because forcing a case study hook template into a psychology breakdown is actually exactly what I was saying in the beginning of this video. You want to avoid this crossover format crosspollination just does not work. So it's intuitive enough
Speaker A
to know that which I think is pretty powerful. So, first it says, okay, for my own videos, only two of the four fit.
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So, here are the example hooks it wrote. Here's how to release six levels of dopamine in 60 seconds of video. Or, dopamine driven content is outperforming everything else. So, here's the easiest framework for triggering six layers of it. I kind of like the second one. I
Speaker A
don't really love the first one. So, let's keep going. This is the one Peter Visuals format that actually worked. One level of dopamine is bad for attention.
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Three levels is good, and six levels is what makes people addicted. That that might actually work. Bonus footage. I studied 200 of the most addicting videos on the internet, but a comment said, "You're overthinking it." And the truth
Speaker A
is, they all hit the same six dopamine triggers I now use in every script. I think there could be something here.
Speaker A
It's a bit long-winded. If you force me to make your next video addictive in six steps is exactly what I would do. This is this is decent. That's actually decent. How to turn any boring topic into an addictive video because dopamine
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driven hooks are on fire right now. Eh, I'd probably skip this. Now, one thing I didn't mention is this is grading these hooks based on the criteria in the rubric, right? So, it's rating these A's. It's not going to pull ones that
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are bad fits. I've coded it. So, it's like, yo, if it's a C or below, don't even give it to me. And so, that's why you're seeing these grades. This one from Brier, if you held a gun to my head
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and said you had to make a video addictive in the next 24 hours, I'd basically give you my six level dopamine ladder. This could work for a yapper.
Speaker A
It's a little long for me. For dopamine hooks, single trigger is Dtier. Nobody actually stays for one trigger anymore.
Speaker A
I don't love that. I have bad news for all of you who copy hook templates.
Speaker A
Single trigger hooks are dead in 2026 because dopamine has gone multi-layered. And I don't really love that either. So, there's only a couple in this list that I really like. Let's see the originals.
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There are six levels of dopamine your brain hits while watching a video, and most creators only trigger one of them.
Speaker A
That's pretty good. Most creators trigger one type of dopamine in a video. The viral ones trigger six. That's pretty good. Some videos release six types of dopamine in under a minute.
Speaker A
That's why they feel impossible to stop watching. There's something good there as well. Addictive videos don't have one good hook. They have a dopamine ladder and there are exactly six rungs. Eh, I don't love exactly six rungs. Six levels
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of dopamine separate the videos, but separate the videos people watch from the videos people can't stop watching.
Speaker A
That's like a good tweet. I don't know if that's good for a hook. So, the point is what we have here now is based on what I put in the topic, we generated hook options for each of these people
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plus originals. Now, as you can see, the more videos that you analyze, the deeper this goes. And so, you actually want to have a lot more videos in the hopper, right? So, here we only are getting two, three, three, we're only getting like
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seven. Well, there's one more, nine or so that fit because of the given topic that we have. If you analyze your whole backlog and then you've got a ton to pull from, you'll have so many more options. So, this is kind of like the
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initial list of hooks. Now, as a backup, where I think this closes the loop for sure is around this original rewrite.
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So, what I can now do is I can say, you know what, I don't really like any of these, but this this one gave me an interesting idea. I'm going to go play around on my side and like write
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something that's a derivative of this. I'm going to paste it in and then I want this to grade my hook against the criteria and also rewrite it for me. So I'm going to paste in let's just let's just come up with one now. So I'll say
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this is how you get people actually addicted to your content. It's called dopamine ladders.
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And once you learn it, you'll never look at content the same way again. Let's just say this is something I came up with. So, I'm going to say go. Now, what it's going to do is it's going to grade this. And I
Speaker A
bet this is going to give it like a B minus or a C++. It's a little long-winded. It's not specific enough, but let's see. It's going to grade it, and it's going to explain why it gave me the grade that it gave me. Here we go.
Speaker A
It gave me a B. So, it said line by line breakdown. This is how you get people actually addicted to your content. It covered this. The distillation was weak.
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This is how you is soft. No specificity. Like I was saying, credibility anchored none. So, it was pretty weak on the first line. It's called dopamine ladders. And once you learn it, you never look at content the same way
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again. Good. But it's vague and it's missing a concrete asset. Why not higher? Here it is. Then it's like, okay, here's three versions of a rewrite that could improve it. Number one, this is how you get people actually addict to
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your content. It's called dopamine ladders, and there exactly six rungs. Why it's stronger? Because this is specific. Number two, most creators trigger one type of dopamine in their videos. The addictive ones use a sixle ladder. Ooh, that's pretty good. That's
Speaker A
my favorite so far right there. I study 200 of the most addictive videos online, and they all do the same thing. climb six rungs of a dopamine ladder. There's something interesting there. But uh this is the best right here for sure. I would
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use that one in my video. So the point is like if you run this workflow and you just use your own videos, right? That's that's the real like if I'm if I'm being honest, the real way to do this is I
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make a 100 videos on my own. I analyze all 100. I pipe all 100 into this. And you could just if you want to avoid the Sand Castle's credits, you still want to use the MCP, but you could just drop in
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the transcripts of the 100. That could also kind of work. Although we do a lot of processing visually, so you kind of want the sand castles analysis. You analyze your hundred, then it runs the top 20. It grabs the there's going to be
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a breakpoint probably for 10 or 12 or 15. You're going to give it a topic and you're likely going to have a lot of other versions, other videos that map to that topic. It's going to write you hooks inspired by that remixed here and
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originals, but the originals are only going to be based on my storytelling principles and your account, not the competitors. Interestingly, the more competitors you add in one analysis, the muddier it gets. So, you might want to run this four times with separate single
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competitor each time and have like the Brier hook writer, the bonus footage hookwriter, the Callaway hook writer, and you go to them separately because I have a feeling that when you combine all the insights, it does dilute to the
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average. But when you do it one at a time, it makes it super clear. What I love though is this. I can put in my own hook and it will grade it against the criteria that we built from the data and
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then rewrite it to tweak. The rewrites are like my favorite part of this. So once you have this done, you don't have to keep running the entire flow again.
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Like I could just drop in another topic here, right? So it's like throw me a different topic. So once you have this in here, what you can do is you can actually set up a project in co-work with this and then just hit that project
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over and over or you could just do this in the same thread. This will burn a bunch of tokens though if you like have to keep running the whole thing. So, multiple ways to do it, but like this
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this is the best way I found to use data, but also originality and writing to get the AI machine anchored to make hooks that actually win. Hopefully, you guys got a lot out of that. I'm going to do a bunch more workflows like this
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where it's in-depth and I'm kind of like more more like raw, like I'm on a podcast kind of riffing, less like performative. So, if you guys liked me on this and you liked seeing this walkthrough, please like let me know in
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the comments. Leave the give me the give me the mustache chef in there and that you know we're cooking. So, that's that's what I want to see. All right, guys. That's all I've got for this video. I tried a little something new
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here where I went more in depth with the workflow. Really shared my screen, like showed literally everything I'm doing.
Speaker A
If you like that and you want me to make more of these content meets AI workflows, drop a little chef emoji. I'm happy to do more of these less theory, more tactics. Just let me know if you like this or not. As always, I'm trying
Speaker A
my absolute best to push the envelope and give you guys stuff that you don't typically see. My goal is to give you the stuff that most people put behind a payw wall that I'll just give you for free. If you've been around here for a
Speaker A
while, you know my goal is to help a million people generate over a million dollars with content. That's a trillion dollars in market impact. That's kind of what I'm going for. In order to do that, I got to give these in-depth things for
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free. So, please drop in the comments what else I can cover that would help you unblock or move forward with content. If you're a business owner or creator and you're trying to grow with content, you can probably tell this is
Speaker A
going to be one of the best channels for you. Please make sure to subscribe and I've got a ton of free stuff in the description. Make sure to check that out. For this video in particular, I've got the free Claude prompt for the hook
Speaker A
machine, the Claude skill for the hook machine, as well as a bunch of other resources. So, make sure to grab that, make sure to use it, and we'll do everything we can to get you guys growing faster. All right, that's all
Speaker A
I've got for this video. We will see you guys on the next one. Peace.
Topics:hooksYouTube strategyClaude AISandcastlesMCPcontent creationhook writingshort-form videoAI workflowsocial media growth
