| name | youtube-thumbnail |
| description | Generate premium, high-CTR YouTube thumbnails (1920x1080) — your real face from video frames, a punchy headline, a brand logo, on a dark high-contrast scene. Use this WHENEVER you need a YouTube cover/обложка/thumbnail, want a face pulled from a video onto a cover, want to "play with the font" on a cover, or want a thumbnail in a specific brand palette. Three engines: (A) GPT full-generation via gpt-image-2 with face+logo reference photos; (B) Compose — real rembg face cutout + scene + text via Playwright; (C) Hybrid — GPT no-text base + compose text for exact font control. |
YouTube Thumbnail Generator
Make a 1920×1080 thumbnail that is cohesive, catchy, and readable at small size:
your real face + a 2–4 word headline + a brand logo on a dark, high-contrast scene.
Pick your own brand palette. The examples below use a clay-orange accent
(#D97757) on near-black (#0A0806) with a cream headline (#F3EEE3) — swap for yours.
Working dir for a job (frames, cutouts, scenes, outputs): keep it under the skill, e.g.
~/.claude/skills/youtube-thumbnail/work/.
Three engines — pick by need
| Engine | Face | Text control | Use when |
|---|
| A. GPT full-gen | gpt-image redraws likeness from refs | font baked by the model | fast, cohesive, AI-rendered face is fine |
| B. Compose | real cutout (rembg) — exact likeness | full font/layout control | authentic real face, repeatable series |
| C. Hybrid | GPT no-text base (face+scene) + compose text | full font control | you like the GPT look but want the font exact |
Likeness tip: GPT needs 4+ close, frontal face refs to actually look like the person.
"Play with the font" → use B or C so the font is yours, not the model's.
Recommended path — examples + photos → GPT (reliable style match)
The most reliable way to hit a specific cover style (e.g. solid dark bg + an accent asterisk/spark + a
bright highlight box on a key word) is to show gpt-image the style with example covers instead of
describing it in words. Feed up to 5 references:
- Two face photos of the person (close frontal crops — see step 1 / 2b).
- Two reference covers in the target style — keep your style examples in
references/refcovers/.
- One brand logo used on the cover.
Prompt: "copy the EXACT visual style of the reference cover images (background, accent graphic, terminal
texture, heavy headline with a bright highlight box on the key word, brand label); use the person from the
face photos — real face, shown LARGE and close-up on the right; headline <HEADLINE> with <KEYWORD> in a
highlight box; render the text exactly as written; high contrast, no watermark." Then finalize (step 5).
Feeding examples is what makes the model reproduce the box style AND keep the text crisp. For fully
deterministic text instead, use scripts/yt-boxes.mjs — solid dark bg, markup [[word]]=accent box /
<<word>>=white box / plain=white text, real face cutout, brand icon:
node scripts/yt-boxes.mjs --l1 "[[KEYWORD]] REST" --l2 "SECOND LINE" --eyebrow "BRAND" \
--face /abs/cutout.png --icon /abs/logo.png --font inter --out /abs/out.png
Pipeline
1. Face from video
ffprobe -v error -show_entries format=duration -of csv=p=0 in.mp4
ffmpeg -y -ss <sec> -i in.mp4 -frames:v 1 -q:v 2 frame.png
Grab evenly-spaced frames, build a numbered contact sheet (ffmpeg tile filter), and let the
user pick by number. ZSH gotcha: zsh does NOT word-split a * glob from a variable — hardcode
timestamps or list filenames explicitly.
2a. Real cutout (engine B/C) — rembg
.venv/bin/python scripts/cutout.py picks/13.png cutouts/13.png
Vertical phone video (2160×3840) → resize to height ≤1280 before cutout (cutout.py handles it).
Model u2net_human_seg via the rembg Python API.
2b. Face refs for GPT (engine A) — close crops
Tight frontal crops beat one wide shot; give ~4 different outfits/angles:
ffmpeg -y -i picks/13.png -vf "crop=1300:1300:430:760,scale=720:720" facerefs/13.jpg
3. Scene / base via gpt-image-2 (engine A/C)
Use any gpt-image-2 generator (OpenAI image API, or a Codex-OAuth wrapper) that accepts
input reference images (≤5): pass the face crops (+ logo). Cyrillic text renders cleanly in most
cases, but a literal → arrow garbles — write "to"/"до" instead. For engine C, prompt for
NO text, left half empty so you can compose text yourself.
Prompt core: "exact same person as in the reference photos, preserve the real face/glasses/hair,
do NOT beautify; subject on the right; dark charcoal background + a brand-accent glow; subtle
terminal/code texture; high contrast; no watermark".
4. Compose text + logo (engine B/C) — scripts/yt-thumb.mjs
node scripts/yt-thumb.mjs --scene /abs/SCENE.png [--face /abs/cutout.png] \
--logo /abs/logo.svg \
--eyebrow "EYEBROW" --l1 "LINE ONE" --l2 "LINE TWO" \
--font oswald --fs 104 --faceside right --out out.png
--scene ABSOLUTE path (code does file://+path; a relative path → black bg).--face optional (omit for engine C — the face is baked into the GPT base).--l2 renders in the accent color. --faceside right|left (text goes opposite, with a scrim).--fs font size (default 150; long lines like a 10+ char word → ~104).--font: intertight (default) · montserrat · oswald · russo · unbounded · rubik · manrope · sourceserif · spectral (all Cyrillic-capable, thumbnail-strong). "Play with the font" = render several.- Logo PNG from SVG:
node scripts/rasterize-logo.mjs logo.svg out.png 600. Supply your own logo.
5. Finalize 1920×1080
gpt-image outputs ~1536×1024 → crop/scale to exactly 1920×1080:
ffmpeg -y -i in.png -vf "scale=1920:1080:force_original_aspect_ratio=increase,crop=1920:1080" out.png
QA: ffmpeg -y -i out.png -vf scale=360:-1 qa-360.png — pass only if the full headline is spelled exactly,
the key word sits inside its highlight box, and every word is readable at small size. If not: regenerate
once, then fall back to scripts/yt-boxes.mjs for exact text.
Setup (once)
cd ~/.claude/skills/youtube-thumbnail
python3 -m venv .venv && .venv/bin/pip install rembg onnxruntime pillow
npm i playwright && npx playwright install chromium
For engine A/C you also need access to a gpt-image-2 generator (OpenAI image API key, or a
Codex-OAuth image wrapper).
References
references/recipes.md — palette, font notes (per-font sizing for long words), prompt patterns.
