artemnovitckii/content-skills

# Anti-AI Writing

**The goal is not "don't sound like AI."** That framing loses — blocklists rot, and chasing a negative gives you a beige voice. The goal is: **sound like a specific person who has thought about the thing and has something to say.** Specificity is the moat. Voice is the moat. Everything below serves those two.

Apply with judgment. **Spirit beats letter.** If a rule makes the sentence worse, break it.

## Where this runs

This skill matters most on **written content** — text a reader's eye scans. Run the **full pass** there: captions, carousels, newsletters, threads, LinkedIn, long-form, DMs, landing copy. It's the last filter on every written piece.

On **spoken content** (reel and video scripts — the words get said aloud), run the **spoken subset only**:
- **Apply:** specificity (Level 3+), kill hollow reframes that don't pay off, cut borrowed-authority / thinkfluencer filler, cut significance inflation. These hurt out loud too.
- **Skip:** the formatting tells (em dashes, bullets, hashtags don't exist in speech), and go light on the vocab blocklist — spoken cadence forgives, and your voice plus the **viral-hooks** and **storytelling** skills are already doing the heavy de-AI-ing. Over-applying prose rules to a script makes it sound stilted, not human.

# Dumbify

People don't churn because content is too simple. They churn because following it is **too much work.** Every bit of mental effort — a fancy word, a nested sentence, undefined jargon — is a reason to swipe away. This skill cuts that effort.

**Target: ~8th-grade reading level for the body, ~6th for hooks.** Easy to follow = low strain = high retention.

## Simple language, not simple ideas

You are lowering the **reading level**, not dumbing down the thinking. The idea can be sophisticated; the words shouldn't be. **Simple ≠ simplistic.** A sharp 13-year-old should be able to *follow* it — that doesn't mean the insight is for 13-year-olds.

## Where it earns its keep

- **High value:** explainers, educational/teaching content, how-to, anything on a technical, financial, or abstract topic. This is where dense writing kills retention.
- **Low value:** already-conversational captions, short hooks, casual personal stories — these come out simple naturally. Don't force this skill where there's nothing to simplify.

# Storytelling

The hook earns the first 2 seconds. **Storytelling earns every second after.** This skill is the craft of holding attention across the body of a spoken or narrative piece — so the viewer who stopped scrolling actually finishes, and wants to share.

Six techniques. The first four do most of the work; the last two are delivery and handoff.

## When this fires

- **Always**, on any talking-head / narrative / opinion / story-driven content (most reels, all long-form, founder stories, hot takes).
- **The Dance and Rhythm apply even to tutorials and listicles** — any content with a through-line benefits from open loops and varied cadence.
- **Direction and Story Lens shine most on story/opinion pieces** — where there's a narrative or a take to angle.
- **Skip** only for pure mechanical demos with zero narration ("watch me click this").

## Before you write: use real material, never invent

# Viral Hooks

A hook has exactly ONE job: help the right viewer decide to keep watching. To do that job it must deliver two things, and only two things:

1. **Topic clarity** — within 1-2 seconds, the viewer knows exactly what this is about.
2. **On-target curiosity** — the viewer believes this is for THEM, and an open question pulls them forward.

Everything in this skill exists to make a hook hit both. A hook that's clever but unclear fails. A hook that's clear but flat fails. Both, or it's not done.

**Always pair with your voice:** before writing hooks, read the hooks from your own top-performing posts. Match their cadence and energy — the patterns below are mechanics, your real posts are the sound. If you have a voice file (see the **voice-dna** skill in this pack), use it.

**If you have no sample of your voice** (auditing an outsider's script, a brand-new account, fewer than ~10 posts): proceed on the mechanics alone and say so in the output ("voice unverified — no sample to check against"). Never block, never silently pretend the voice check happened.

## The Four Hook Killers