Storytelling Skills
A suite of nine Claude Code skills that apply the same six psychology-based storytelling levers across every content format — short-form video, long-form YouTube, titles & thumbnails, carousels, email, and website wireframes — plus a post-publish loop that diagnoses retention and extracts your channel's winning formula from its own data.
General-purpose: built for any niche, any business, any workspace. No format-specific jargon, no narrow examples.
The Six Levers
Every skill is built on one shared engine — six levers that make the human brain stop, feel, and keep going. The full psychology lives in storytelling-hooks; the others recap it and link back.
| # | Lever | Job |
|---|
| 1 | Curiosity gap | Open a loop, don't close it |
| 2 | Emotional mirror | Target the feeling, not the fact |
| 3 | Conflict engine | Goal + obstacle = tension |
| 4 | Relatability | Broadest shared feeling → "this is me" |
| 5 | Pattern + surprise | Set an expectation, then break it |
| 6 | Three-act structure | Setup → problem → resolution |
The Skills
Install
Option A — install script (recommended)
Clone, then run the installer for your OS. It copies each skill into your personal Claude Code skills directory (~/.claude/skills/).
git clone https://github.com/yaxeen/storytelling-skills.git
cd storytelling-skills
macOS / Linux:
./install.sh
Windows (PowerShell):
./install.ps1
Option B — single skill from a package
Each skill is also packaged as a standalone .skill file in dist/. Unzip the one you want into ~/.claude/skills/:
unzip dist/storytelling-hooks.skill -d ~/.claude/skills/
Option C — manual
Copy any folder from skills/ into ~/.claude/skills/.
Restart Claude Code after installing — skills load at session start.
Usage
Once installed, the skills activate automatically based on what you ask:
| You say… | Skill that fires |
|---|
| "Write me a reel hook about morning routines" | storytelling-hooks |
| "Script a 12-minute YouTube video on saving money" | long-form-youtube |
| "Give me title and thumbnail ideas" | titles-and-thumbnails |
| "Turn this into an Instagram carousel" | carousel-narratives |
| "Write a subject line for my newsletter" | email-hooks |
| "Plan the wireframe for my landing page" | wireframe-writer |
| "Review this page structure" | wireframe-reviewer |
| "My video flopped — here's the retention graph" | retention-audit |
| "Why do some of my videos work and others die?" | channel-formula |
You can also invoke any skill explicitly by name.
Repository Structure
storytelling-skills/
├── skills/ # Source — one folder per skill
│ ├── storytelling-hooks/SKILL.md
│ ├── long-form-youtube/SKILL.md
│ └── ...
├── dist/ # Packaged .skill files (single-file install)
├── install.sh # Installer (macOS/Linux)
├── install.ps1 # Installer (Windows)
├── scripts/package.ps1 # Rebuild dist/*.skill from skills/
├── README.md
├── CONTRIBUTING.md
└── LICENSE
How It Works
- Each skill has YAML frontmatter with a
name and a description written as a "Use when…" trigger, so Claude Code knows exactly when to load it.
- Content is written in tight, scannable bullets with quick-reference tables, a clear workflow (intake → work → deliver), a common-mistakes table, and an end-of-skill checklist; generator skills add a bad→good rewrite example and a
patterns.md swipe file.
- The suite optimizes for the right audience, not the most eyeballs: hooks, titles, and pages qualify the viewer they want, because wrong-audience attention kills retention and conversion.
storytelling-hooks is the canonical core; the other eight recap the six levers in one line and link back, so each works standalone but reinforces the suite.retention-audit + channel-formula close the loop after publishing: audit where a video died, extract what promise the winners keep, feed both into the next script.
Development
Edit a skill under skills/<name>/SKILL.md. On push to main, a
GitHub Action automatically rebuilds
dist/*.skill and commits the result, so the packages never drift from source.
To rebuild locally (e.g. before a PR):
./scripts/package.ps1
Contributing
Contributions welcome — new formats, sharper examples, better checklists. See CONTRIBUTING.md.
License
MIT © 2026 Muhammad Yasin
