yt-shorts

1# yt-shorts
2 
3A Short cut out of a long video is not a clip of the best moment. It is a moment that **survives
4without the video around it**, which is a much smaller set.
5 
6## Picking
7 
8Read the transcript and find spans of 20-55 seconds where all three are true:
9 
101. It opens on a complete thought. If the first sentence needs the previous minute, it is not a Short.
112. There is a turn in it - a claim, then something that complicates or proves it.
123. It ends on a line, not a trail-off.
13 
14Rank the candidates and show the user the top five with their timecodes and first line, so they can
15reject one without reading the whole transcript.
16 
17## Writing each one
18 
19- **A NEW first line.** The long video's line assumes context this viewer does not have. Write the
20  replacement and run it through `../yt-script/hookscore.py`.
21- **On-screen text for the first two seconds**, different words from the spoken line.
22- **A loop point**: what the last line sets up so the first line answers it.
23- Vertical framing note - what gets cropped out of a 16:9 frame and whether that matters.
24 
25## The gate
26 
27Nothing here publishes. This skill writes and you publish. Every output ends in a block the user
28copies, and the last line of every run is the question: **ship it, or change it?**