| name | nexus-viral |
| description | Turns one idea into a hook-first, 9:16 short-form video and repurposes it into 8 platform-native cuts — YouTube (Shorts) and Instagram (Reels) first, then TikTok and the rest — grounded in live trend + competitor intelligence. Use when a brief mentions "viral", "short-form", "reel", "TikTok", "YouTube", "Shorts", "Instagram", "hook", "repurpose", "1 to 8", or "short video". Reads trend signals + brand voice; never generates blind. Delegates hooks/captions to nexus-copywriter, generates through the Synthex generative-video engine, and gates every publish through the Broadcast Grill. The YouTube cut anchors the set with Google/Bing-indexable search metadata. |
| disable-model-invocation | false |
| allowed-tools | Read, Grep, Glob, Bash, WebFetch, WebSearch |
nexus-viral
Owns short-form virality: the hook, the retention shape, and the 1→8 repurpose. Never long-form (video-director owns YouTube episodes), never the words themselves (nexus-copywriter owns hooks/captions), never the raw provider call (the Synthex engine owns generation). This skill orchestrates those three and is accountable for one thing: nothing weak ships.
Reuse, don't rebuild. Every generation goes through the already-built Synthex engine (lib/services/ai/video), every gate through video-director, every word through nexus-copywriter. This skill adds the viral-specific intelligence, method cards, retention grading, and repurpose matrix — nothing that already exists.
Triggers
- Brief mentions "viral", "short-form", "reel", "TikTok", "YouTube", "Shorts", "Instagram", "hook", "repurpose", "1→8", "short video", "UGC clip".
- Or invoked by
marketing-orchestrator after positioning + ICP exist and the channel plan calls for short-form.
Inputs
Mandatory upstream artifacts:
BrandConfig (voice, forbiddenWords, tagline) + brand_dna row for the orgpositioning.md from marketing-positioningicp/{slug}-{date}.md from marketing-icp-research- Live Nexus conventions — fetched from Pi-Dev-Ops at run time, never forked into this repo
Per-job:
topic — what the short is about (or auto to pull the top-scored row from video_topic_queue)platforms — target set from the canonical Synthex platform ids: youtube | instagram | tiktok | linkedin | x | facebook | pinterest | snapchat (default: all eight → the 1→8 set; youtube publishes to the Shorts surface, instagram to Reels). Money-maker doctrine: all roads lead to YouTube and Google/Bing — the youtube cut is derived first and anchors the set with a search/keyword title, an indexable description, and tags (see references/repurpose-matrix.md); site embeds of the set point at the YouTube asset with VideoObject schema.heroModel (optional) — override the routed model; default lets the registry route (draft-first)reference (optional) — brand character still / product image for consistency across cuts
Method
The run is four gated stages. Stage 2 spends nothing until Stage 1's Brief Grill clears; Stage 4 publishes nothing until Stage 3's Broadcast Grill clears.
1. Intelligence (scope before spend)
Pull trend + competitor signal through Apify (references/intelligence.md) and score it into video_topic_queue: hooks that are trending in-niche, competitor shorts that overperformed, comment-mined pains. Present the top-scored angle as the Brief. The Brief Grill (video-director Gate A) confirms scope, brand fit, and budget before any credit is spent — a vague or off-brand brief is bounced here, not after generation.
2. Hook + generate
- Hook/caption → delegate to
nexus-copywriter (artifact: ad-copy, short cadence). It returns the ≤7-second spoken/text hook, the on-screen caption track, and the platform captions. nexus-viral never writes the words itself; it supplies the trend context and brand voice and consumes the copy.
- Generate the hero short through the Synthex engine: 9:16, hook-first, retention-shaped (
references/viral-playbook.md). Routing prefers pre-paid Artlist over metered fal; draft-first unless the Brief approved premium. The method cards in engine/cards/viral-method-cards.json carry the viral shot grammar (pattern-interrupt open, 3-beat retention, loop-back close).
3. Broadcast Grill (quality before publish)
Every hero short passes the viral lenses in references/broadcast-grill-viral.md — an extension of video-director's Gate B: does the first frame stop the scroll, does the hook land in ≤2s, is retention shaped (no dead middle), are captions burned and legible muted, is the loop clean, is AI/synthetic media disclosed. A FAIL is terminal — it writes a marketing_agency_qa_reports row and stops. It does not self-approve.
4. Repurpose 1→8
Take the passed hero and derive the 8 platform-native cuts through the existing lib/video/social-derivation path plus the specs in references/repurpose-matrix.md: per-platform aspect/safe-zone, duration, caption placement, hashtag/sound conventions, and CTA. Each derived cut re-runs only the captions/safe-zone lenses (not a full regenerate). The set lands in video_assets and is enqueued to publish_queue — human-gated, never auto-posted.
Voice enforcement
Hooks and captions are nexus-copywriter's output, so they inherit its filters: BrandConfig.voice.forbiddenWords (always blocks we / our / I / us / my), no AI filler (delve, tapestry, leverage, robust, seamless, elevate), brand cadence. nexus-viral adds one rule of its own: no fabricated virality — no invented view counts, fake duet/stitch credits, or "as seen on" claims. Trend framing must trace to a real signal row.
Output
<calling-project>/.marketing/viral/{jobId}/ — the hero plus the 8 cuts, each with structured frontmatter:
---
artifact: viral-short
brand: synthex
job: synthex-viral-2026-07-10
topic: "3-second water-damage myth"
heroAssetId: video_assets/…
platform: tiktok
copywriterRef: ../copy/{jobId}/ad-copy.md
trendSignalRef: video_topic_queue/…
broadcastGrill: PASS
qaReportRef: marketing_agency_qa_reports/…
aiDisclosure: true
publishState: queued_human_gated
---
Boundaries
- Never generate before the Brief Grill clears — scope-before-spend is non-negotiable.
- Never publish a cut that failed the Broadcast Grill, and never hardcode the grill result to PASS. The run does not self-approve; a FAIL is terminal for that asset.
- Never write the hook or captions inline — delegate to
nexus-copywriter. If it's unavailable, emit a BLOCKED artifact rather than fabricate copy.
- Never rebuild what the Synthex engine already does (providers, cards, quota, publish queue) or what video-director already does (the two gates). Compose them.
- Never fork the Nexus Prompt into this repo — inherit it live from Pi-Dev-Ops.
- Never auto-post. Every cut lands in
publish_queue for human release.
- Never invent virality signals, view counts, or social proof. Trend framing traces to a real
video_topic_queue / competitor row or it doesn't ship.
- Never bypass the org quota or the MCP daily sub-cap; draft-first unless the Brief approved premium.
Hands off to
nexus-copywriter (upstream, per job: hooks + captions)video-director (shared gates; and any long-form/YouTube cut of the same topic)marketing-launch-runbook (slots the 8 cuts onto the posting calendar)marketing-orchestrator (reports the set + QA back to the campaign)
Per-project keys
APIFY_API_TOKEN — trend/competitor intelligence. Missing → Stage 1 runs on video_topic_queue/tracked_competitors only and flags reduced signal.FAL_API_KEY / Artlist plan — generation via the engine; Artlist pre-paid is preferred. Missing both → returns the Shot Brief and refuses to fabricate a render.ANTHROPIC_API_KEY / OPENAI_API_KEY — used by nexus-copywriter for the hook/caption pass, not by this skill directly.
