virality-review

name	virality-review
description	Review a short before or after production using quality gates for hook, retention, clarity, payoff, risk, and platform fit without promising guaranteed virality.

Virality Review

Use When

• The user wants an editorial preflight before scripting, rendering, or publishing a short.
• A finished draft needs a go/no-go review focused on viewer pull, retention, clarity, payoff, risk, and platform fit.
• The agent needs a generic Content Machine rubric that can reuse local research without depending on one product, niche, or campaign.

Core Rule

Treat virality as a set of quality gates, not an outcome promise.

This skill can identify friction, missed opportunities, and revision paths. It must not guarantee views, reach, conversion, or algorithmic performance.

Core Approach

1. Define the target viewer, platform, archetype, and intended action.
2. Use local repo knowledge before generic advice: short-form-archetype-research for archetype gates, short-form-production-playbook for editorial craft, style-profile-library for local caption/pacing rules, reverse-engineer-winner for reference breakdowns, and publish-prep-review for final rendered readiness.
3. Score the short across six gates: hook, retention, clarity, payoff, risk, and platform_fit.
4. Separate blocking failures from optimization notes.
5. Recommend concrete revisions that preserve the chosen archetype.

Review Gates

• hook: The first beat creates immediate context, curiosity, stakes, or visual contrast within the opening second.
• retention: The edit keeps adding information, tension, pattern changes, or useful escalation without dead air.
• clarity: The viewer can understand the premise, subject, and next beat on a phone without rereading.
• payoff: The short resolves the promise with a reveal, result, lesson, emotional turn, or clear call to action.
• risk: The draft avoids misleading claims, rights gaps, unsafe advice, brand mismatch, platform policy issues, and unwanted controversy.
• platform_fit: Duration, aspect ratio, safe zones, captions, pacing, native visual language, and packaging fit the selected platform.

Inputs

• script, outline, storyboard, visuals.json, render notes, or final MP4
• target platform such as TikTok, Instagram Reels, or YouTube Shorts
• optional niche, viewer, style profile, archetype, reference breakdown, and publish constraints

Outputs

• gate scores with pass, caution, or fail status
• top blocking issues
• specific rewrite, edit, caption, visual, pacing, or packaging fixes
• a recommendation: proceed, revise, reroute, or reject

Output Contract

Return a compact review object or markdown summary with:

• context: platform, archetype, viewer, and artifact reviewed
• overall: proceed, revise, reroute, or reject
• scores: six gate scores from 1 to 5
• blockers: issues that must be fixed before production or publish
• improvements: high-leverage non-blocking changes
• next_steps: the smallest concrete changes to make next

Pre-Production Checklist

• The hook can be understood from the first frame and first spoken line.
• The script has one promise, one core idea, and one payoff.
• Every beat either escalates, clarifies, proves, or resolves.
• The visual plan leaves room for captions and platform chrome.
• The planned archetype matches the target viewer and source assets.
• Risky claims, source rights, or sensitive topics have a review path.

Post-Production Checklist

• The rendered first 1s to 3s contains the real hook, not filler.
• Captions are readable, synchronized, and native to the format.
• Visual rhythm supports the spoken rhythm without random noise.
• The payoff arrives before viewer patience runs out.
• Packaging copy, thumbnail/frame choice, and CTA match the content.
• Any final publish decision can be handed to publish-prep-review for technical and provenance validation.

Non-Goals

• Do not guarantee virality or algorithmic reach.
• Do not approve a weak short only because it follows a trend.
• Do not replace final render validation, rights review, or platform policy review.
• Do not copy a winning reference; extract transferable structure.