Modern Creator
Duncan Rogoff | Learn Claude Code · YouTube

Claude Just Changed Content Creation Forever! (Tutorial)

A 12-minute live build: one Claude Code skill turns any YouTube video into three platform-ready shorts with AI avatar, B-roll, and auto-scheduling.

Posted
yesterday
Duration
Format
Tutorial
educational
Views
1.6K
82 likes
Big Idea

The argument in one line.

A single Claude Code skill can repurpose any long-form YouTube video into three psychologically distinct short-form clips with AI avatar narration, auto-generated B-roll, and scheduled publishing across every major platform, without filming a second piece of content.

Who This Is For

Read if. Skip if.

READ IF YOU ARE…
  • You publish long-form YouTube videos and want a repurposing engine that extracts clips without re-filming.
  • You are experimenting with Claude Code skills and want a real-world example of a multi-step agentic pipeline.
  • You use or are evaluating HeyGen for AI avatars and want to see how it wires into a Claude-driven production system.
  • You post across Instagram, TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and LinkedIn and want a scheduling layer with per-platform captions.
SKIP IF…
  • You do not have a library of long-form content yet -- this is a repurposing engine, not a from-scratch creator.
  • You want organic, face-to-camera short-form content without AI-generated avatars.
TL;DR

The full version, fast.

Shortify takes a YouTube URL and runs a seven-stage pipeline: mines the transcript for the strongest moments, generates three distinct clip angles (proof, contrarian, transformation), writes hooks from a proven vault, clones the host via HeyGen, assembles B-roll from screen capture first and AI images only when necessary, burns karaoke captions, writes platform-specific copy, and schedules via Blotato. The final 51-second clip was produced while the host was recording this tutorial.

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Chapters

Where the time goes.

00:0000:27

01 · Clone Yourself With AI

Hook and promise: one long-form video becomes three scheduled shorts without additional filming.

00:2802:03

02 · Short-Form Video Anatomy

Diagrams the 4-layer structure: screencap top, avatar bottom, karaoke captions center, text hook first 3-6s.

02:0402:29

03 · Launching Shortify in Claude Code

Pastes a YouTube URL into Shortify, selects Opus 4.8, confirms one angle for demo.

02:3005:16

04 · Mining Key Video Moments

Prompt walkthrough: timestamped transcript in, moments file with angle shapes out.

05:1706:14

05 · Three Angles Strategy

Proof / Contrarian / Transformation -- same footage, three psychologically distinct entry points.

06:1507:35

06 · Writing Viral Hooks

Hook vault rule: never invent a shape, only swap variables. Three hook layers: spoken, visual, text.

07:3608:00

07 · Short-Form Script Writing

Lead with result, name the pain removed, name the specific feature, stay under 30 seconds.

08:0109:06

08 · Generating Your AI Avatar

Prompts Google AI Studio for a DSLR-style reference photo, iterates until the result passes.

09:0710:12

09 · Setting Up HeyGen

HeyGen account setup, avatar creation, passing avatar look ID to Claude.

10:1311:18

10 · Smart B-Roll Strategy

Screencap is the hero; AI-generated art fills gaps only when screencap is insufficient.

11:1911:42

11 · Auto-Scheduling All Platforms

Blotato queues each angle staggered by days; per-platform captions written automatically.

11:4312:14

12 · Watching the Final Short

Plays back the 51-second clip produced by the system during this tutorial.

12:1512:27

13 · Get the Skill

CTA: Skool Claude Code Club in description ($9).

Atomic Insights

Lines worth screenshotting.

  • Most of the video is not the video -- the transcript contains maybe four moments worth keeping; the intro is always skippable.
  • Three clip angles from the same footage prevent audience fatigue only when each angle carries a different psychological entry point: proof, belief-flip, or before-and-after.
  • Never invent a hook shape: collect hooks from high-performing creators, keep the proven structure, and swap only the tool name, the number, or the outcome.
  • A short-form hook has three simultaneous layers -- spoken hook, visual hook on the screencap, and a text hook overlaid for the first three to six seconds.
  • Lead with the result before explaining the mechanism, because most people care what the thing does before they care how it works.
  • Your real product should appear in the screencap early and often; AI-generated B-roll is a fallback, not the lead.
  • A HeyGen AI avatar requires only a 15-second webcam recording or a single well-lit image to clone a presenter.
  • Angle scheduling matters: stagger each clip by at least two days so the same audience is not hit with variations back to back.
  • The script for a short should be under 30 seconds, name the pain the tool removes, and name the specific feature.
  • Generating a convincing AI avatar photo takes multiple attempts in AI Studio -- the first output is rarely usable.
  • The CTA card at the end is the only place to sell; the rest of the script should carry pure value.
  • Claude Code with Opus 4.8 is the right tier for this workflow because it involves multi-step interdependent tasks.
Takeaway

Seven steps from one video to a full week of shorts.

WHAT TO LEARN

The system treats transcript mining, angle selection, hook writing, avatar rendering, B-roll planning, and scheduling as separate deterministic stages -- each with its own prompt -- so the whole pipeline can run without creative decisions at execution time.

  • Mining the transcript first saves all downstream effort: a moments file with timestamp ranges and angle shapes gives every later prompt a concrete anchor instead of asking the AI to invent from memory.
  • Three angles from one video can reach the same audience three times without cannibalism, but only if each angle uses a different psychological opening -- proof, belief-flip, or before-and-after.
  • Hook writing is a search problem, not a creative one: proven hook structures from high-performing accounts should be collected and treated as templates where only the variable changes.
  • The screencap of the real product is the highest-trust visual in a short; AI-generated B-roll should appear only when the screencap cannot illustrate the specific claim being made.
  • Scheduling each angle at least two days apart prevents the audience from seeing variations of the same post simultaneously, reducing both fatigue and algorithm overlap.
  • An AI avatar can be trained from a single well-lit image rather than video footage, but the prompting process requires several iterations before a usable result emerges.
  • Per-platform captions are not optional polish -- each platform has different hook conventions, character limits, and hashtag norms that materially affect reach.
Glossary

Terms worth knowing.

Shortify
A Claude Code custom skill that automates the full pipeline from YouTube URL to scheduled short-form clips across multiple platforms.
Hook vault
A saved collection of proven hook patterns from top-performing creators, used as templates by swapping only variables like tool name, number, or outcome.
Karaoke captions
Word-by-word on-screen captions that highlight each word as it is spoken, common in short-form video to drive watch time on muted feeds.
Proof angle
A clip strategy that opens on the outcome or a specific number, then shows the mechanism.
Contrarian angle
A clip that opens by stating a wrong belief the audience holds, then uses a real result as the evidence that disproves it.
Transformation angle
A clip structured as before-and-after: open on what the old approach costs, then reveal the new outcome.
HeyGen
A web platform that creates an AI video avatar from 15 seconds of footage or a single image, then renders new scripts as video using that cloned appearance and voice.
Blotato
A third-party social scheduling service that queues and publishes video clips across Instagram, TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and LinkedIn.
Avatar look ID
A unique identifier in HeyGen pointing to a specific trained avatar, passed to Claude Code so the pipeline can call the HeyGen API.
Resources

Things they pointed at.

00:00toolShortify
08:01toolHeyGen
11:19toolBlotato
Quotables

Lines you could clip.

00:00
Claude Code can now take a long YouTube video and turn it into shorts in just a couple of minutes.
Clean result-first statement, no setup requiredTikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
06:15
The whole video lives or dies in one second.
Punchy standalone principleIG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote
06:37
Every hook is created from a vault of patterns that have already proven they stop a scroll.
Contrarian to the creative-originality defaultnewsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote
10:13
Your product is the star. Most AI shorts fail here, drowning the screen in generated art that means nothing.
Belief-flip with a specific failure mode namedTikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
09:03
This is the worst it's ever going to be.
Evergreen AI optimism framing, clips cleanlyIG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote
The Script

Word for word.

Read-along

Don't just watch it. Burn it in.

See every word as it's spoken — crank it to 2× and still catch all of it. The same dual-channel trick behind Amazon's Kindle + Audible.

metaphoranalogy
00:00QuadCode can now take a long YouTube video and turn it into shorts in just a couple of minutes. The system writes scripts and viral hooks, creates an AI avatar, and edits all the b roll for you. By the end of this video, you will understand all of the pieces that go into truly having a digital clone.
00:15And if we haven't met yet, my name is Duncan Rogoff. I'm a former art director for brands like Apple, PlayStation, and Nissan, and I now run one of the top communities for learning Cloud Code and building income. So focus in, close all your open tabs, and let's build.
00:28So this is one of the videos playing on my Instagram. And while it may look simple, there are actually a lot of different moving pieces here. And so I wanted to walk you through some of the strategy behind it, what some of these pieces are, how you can prompt Claude to build out a system like this for you so you can do the same.
00:45If you wanna get access to any of the prompts we used today along with the custom skill that I built already made for you, just check the link in the description. Join the community. It's only $9.
00:53If you're watching this, you probably already know that I create a bunch of long form content on YouTube. But the problem is this only lives in one place, and it's really hard to create little individual clips from it unless I wanna spend a bunch of time editing. So I wanted to see if I could find a way to clone myself.
01:08What a lot of creators do is they film a long form piece of content for YouTube and then they film a bunch of short form clips on the same topic, but that takes a lot of time to film all of these new versions and then to edit them and upload them and all of that. So I wanted to see if there was a way where I could just give ClaudeCode a link to my long form YouTube video, hit go, and come back to three short form videos already done for me completely end to end.
01:31And so why don't we fire up Claude and get this thing kicked off, and then I will walk you through the strategy behind it and all of the prompts so you can do this yourself. This is basically the anatomy of the video, kinda like how I figured out we should structure it. You've seen this style of video on any of the short form platforms.
01:45Right? So we have the screen capture at the top, which occupies this section right here. We have the avatar at the bottom.
01:51So my little clone of myself sits in the bottom here. We have all of the caption directly in the center kind of like across the split. And then at the top, just for the first like three to six seconds, we actually have that on screen text hook that I was talking about.
02:04So for this, I'm going to use Opus 4.8 because it's more complex task, it requires a lot steps, and you need a more powerful model for it. So all I have to do is type in Shortify, and I can either actually give this a transcript and a screen capture, or what's pretty cool is I can literally just come in and copy a link address to one of my YouTube videos and paste this in, and the system will get to work.
02:24So the first thing that it's going to do is it's going to read the transcript and figure out which are the core moments that are worth keeping. From there, it's going to figure out three different angles for me so I can actually come out with three short form clips so we can test which angles are gonna work. From there, it's going to create the hook, which is arguably the most important piece of any short form video.
02:44It's going to pull from proven patterns that we know work. It's not going to invent anything fresh because you don't want Quad to try to come up with a good hook because honestly, it's just not gonna work.
02:54So if there's a platform that you like, take Instagram for example, and there are any content creators in your niche that are performing well, start saving their hooks somewhere so Quad can reference them. So it's pretty cool. This is just asking me, do I have a clean screen recording or should I just pull from the YouTube video?
03:07So I'm just gonna say use the YouTube video. And it's asking me if I want the system to create all three angles at first or just one angle to do a test run. So for the sake of this video, I'm just gonna say let's only do one angle because we only have so much time.
03:20So I'll submit these answers. So after it decides the hook, it's then going to write the script. So it's actually going to understand all of the ideas from the core of the video and it's going to rewrite the script for short form based again off of proven formats that actually work.
03:34After that, it's where the magic really starts to come together. This is the avatar. It's going to use a site called HeyGen where we've created a clone of myself.
03:42I'm going to show you how to do that. All I have to do is tell the system where to look for that clone and it's going to have the clone read the script for me. Next is going to create all of the b roll, and there are basically two ways to do this.
03:53One is going to take clips from the YouTube video itself, or if it doesn't feel like the screen capture is enough, it's actually going to generate an AI image to fill that space. It's also going to add the on screen captions where the word highlights one piece at a time.
04:06Step seven is creating per platform captions. So captions for Instagram, captions for YouTube shorts, captions for TikTok, captions for LinkedIn, it's going to write all of that for us. Next, it's going to automatically schedule this out to publish to all of your platforms, and it's going to schedule each angle a couple days apart so your audience isn't being hit with the same thing over and over again.
04:26So step number one is mining the right angles because we are trying to cut fifteen minutes down to sixty seconds. So there are maybe like four key moments that you really wanna pull from. So the system is going to read the entire video transcript.
04:39It's going to create timestamps for every single word. So that way the system knows how to line up all of the graphics. So here's an example of a prompt that you could give to Claude Code.
04:48So here's the timestamp transcript of a long form video and then attach the transcript. You are my short form producer. Read the whole thing and pull the moments that could each carry a standalone short.
04:58Ignore the intro and Anyhowsky. For each moment, give me the timestamp range, the single idea it makes, and which shape it fits best. Is this a result with a number, a belief it overturns, or a before and after?
05:09And then one line on why it should stop a scroll. And then save them to a file so we can build off this from here. Next is creating an outline for the three different shorts so that they never compete.
05:19So we have the proof angle, a contrarian angle, and the transformation angle. So read the moments file that we just created. We are cutting this one video into three distinct shorts that must not feel like the same post three times.
05:31First, we lead with proof, results led. Open on the outcome and the number, then the proof, and then the mechanism. Because most people care about what the thing does more than they care about how it actually works.
05:41For a contrarian video, belief flip, open to the wrong belief everyone holds, then drop the results as the proof that breaks it. And transformation before or after, open on what the old way costs, then the new world and the result. So for each, give me the one line outline of the short and the exact moment from the moments file it is built on.
06:00So this is pretty cool. The system just finished writing a script for our video. So Quad Code just built my entire business command center in one sitting, something a dev team would charge you thousands for and take weeks to ship.
06:12So the hook, the whole video lives or dies in one second. It's probably like the first three seconds of a video are the most important piece, but you need actually three different hooks. You need the spoken hook, you need the visual hook, and you need the text hook.
06:25So what is the avatar saying? What is happening in the screen capture above? And is there some sort of text hook over top of the video?
06:32So you could see this video right here, this says quad code built my entire agentic OS. That is the text hook on screen. The visual hook is going to be this little quad code module typing up here.
06:43And then I just said, quad code built my entire business command center while I was at the vet, which is actually true. So like I said, every hook is created from a vault of patterns that have already proven they stop a scroll. So you keep the proven shape and you just swap the variable.
06:57So is there a different tool? Is the proof number different? Is the outcome different?
07:00So we're taking structures that we know work. Like, again, don't do this, do that. We know that works, so we want to take that and just make it relevant to our topic.
07:09So for each angle that we created, write the hook. Do not invent a new hook shape starting from a hook pattern that has already proven it works and swap only the variables. For each angle, give me the spoken hook, so the first line out of my mouth which must promise a specific payoff without revealing it.
07:23Name the tool, so quad code or the featured, and then we need that on screen hook title. So the next thing the system needs to do is it needs to write the script. So it's going to take the long form transcript, again, figure out the best moments, and write a full script on it.
07:36So write the spoken script for each angle, keep it under thirty seconds. So we have to open with the hook that we already wrote. We need to lead with the result before we actually talk about what the thing does.
07:45We need to answer why. So name the pain it removes. Like what is the thing that your audience no longer has to do because they have this thing?
07:53Name whatever the feature is specifically. Right? With like natural pauses the way a person talks.
07:57So how do you actually train an AI avatar on yourself? So I just took a screenshot from my video and I came over to AI Studio on Google because I just found that it's really easy to use and I literally just said, please make the man wearing an orange hoodie, style it like it was shot on a DSLR with shallow depths of field.
08:15And I said I want a higher angle taken with a wide angle lens, but keep the man large in frame. And I want him a little bit more well lit with a warm softbox style glow. The background should be a bit darker and more in shadow with a vibe like a YouTube studio.
08:28And then I went ahead and it created this. And this is a pretty good image. This is solid.
08:33You can see it's still like me sitting here in this room, but I'm more well lit. The background is dark. I'm in my orange hoodie.
08:39Obviously, this softbox is here and that's a problem, but you can just bring that into Photoshop and say like, yo, like remove the softbox or you can tell the model to like take it out of the frame. So I went through this process a couple of different times and the models often don't work like right out the gate and so just try it a couple of different times until you get something you're happy with.
08:55And in the end, this was the look that I was really happy with. I felt like it looked close enough to me. It was realistic enough to pass.
09:01It's not a 100% perfect, but honestly, it's getting scary good. And as we like to say, this is the worst it's going to ever be. The next thing you're going to do is you're going to come into Hagen.
09:11Hagen is by far the best site for building AI avatars or digital clones of yourself. It's been around for a while, and it's still the industry standard, and it's getting better every day. So after you create your account, all you need to do is come into avatars, click plus new avatar to create a brand new avatar.
09:26You can either use real footage or video to create your avatar or you can create a virtual character with AI, which is basically just image prompting. What you would wanna do is click clone a real person. You can see you can actually talk and record a live video via your webcam into the system.
09:39It only takes fifteen seconds, or you can come in here and upload any footage. You can actually upload images or videos into the system. I honestly just use an image.
09:47I already have my avatar created. It's this one right here. And basically, all you need to do for Claude is you just need to give it this avatar look ID and hand this over to Claude and then say, hey, here's my HeyGen avatar.
09:58I want you to use this for the system. So Claude actually knows what to do with it. Just come over to the HeyGen developer documentation, copy this link, paste this into Quad.
10:07All you have to say is like, hey, here's the API documentation. I need you to figure out how to use my avatar with the ID I just gave you. Next part is the b roll, which is honestly the hardest part to get right.
10:17And personally, I don't feel like I've nailed it a 100% yet, but I have a really solid foundation that I can definitely improve on over the next couple of weeks. What we wanna do here is we wanna let the system know that the long form video is the hero, and we should only be generating b roll if we absolutely must. Because generating new clips takes time and is expensive.
10:35So the system is going to build the visual plan for each short beat by beat against the script. So it's going to dissect the script and go line by line, moment by moment to figure out whether it should use b roll from the long form video or it needs to generate a new image for something that doesn't exist. We definitely wanna make sure that we use the screen capture like early and often because that is the hero.
10:55There are some times where we actually want to generate multiple clips for a single moment. So if we have like some sort of list, right, we may wanna have like a different image generated for every bullet point in that list. So we use screen capture, which is the real product for most of the beats.
11:09We use b roll, which is the conceptual art in our style from the design system I gave it. So if you wanted to see how I created the design system for all my Instagram carousels, I'll leave a video up here. So this video is done.
11:20It's asked me if I just wanna stick to our standard schedule or if I wanna schedule this as a trial reel. So I'm just gonna go ahead and schedule this as a trial reel. So what the system is going to do is it's going to use a third party service called Blotato.
11:33We can see if we come in here, we have all of my videos scheduled out on all of my different social media platforms. So this just made a fifty one second short for me while I was recording this YouTube video. So let's watch it.
11:43Quad Code just built my entire business command center in one sitting, something a dev team would charge you thousands for and take weeks to ship. It's an agentic operating system, one dashboard that tracks the latest drops in my industry, my competitors, all my YouTube and social stats, and every active project. So this is pretty awesome.
12:00We can scrub through the rest. It's looking pretty good. Like it generated this image of me with my little dachshund, Larry, who's pretty awesome.
12:06Just shows off the dashboard, generated all this b roll to describe dynamic workflows, all of these little call outs here, and all I had to do was give it a link to my YouTube video. This was definitely more of a complex build today. If you wanna get access to this skill and all the prompts already built for you, just check the link in the description.
12:22If you wanna see how I built the AIOS from scratch, just check out this video right here. I'll see
The Hook

The bait, then the rug-pull.

Give Claude Code a YouTube link, walk away, and come back to three scheduled short-form clips with an AI avatar delivering the script -- that is the promise this tutorial delivers on in real time, building the system live while explaining every prompt that drives it.

Frameworks

Named ideas worth stealing.

00:28list

The 4-Layer Short

  1. Screencap (top) -- the real product shown early
  2. Avatar (bottom) -- AI clone delivers the script
  3. Karaoke captions (center) -- word-by-word highlight
  4. Text hook (top) -- shown only in the first 3-6 seconds

The visual architecture every short-form clip in this system follows.

Steal forAny tutorial or product demo reformatted as a short-form vertical clip
05:17model

Three Angles That Never Compete

  1. Proof -- open on outcome/number, then mechanism
  2. Contrarian -- open on wrong belief, drop result as disproof
  3. Transformation -- open on old-way cost, reveal new world

Three psychologically distinct entry points for the same content so the audience can be served three times without feeling redundant.

Steal forAny content repurposing workflow
06:15concept

Hook Vault Rule

Collect proven hook patterns from high-performing creators in your niche. Never invent a new shape. Swap only the variables: tool name, number, or outcome.

Steal forEmail subject lines, reel hooks, YouTube titles
04:25concept

Mining Moments Prompt

A structured prompt turning a timestamped transcript into a moments file: timestamp range, single idea, angle shape, scroll-stop reason.

Steal forAny long-form content that needs to be cut into standalone clips
CTA Breakdown

How they asked for the click.

VERBAL ASK
12:15product
If you wanna get access to this skill and all the prompts already built for you, just check the link in the description.

Clean and brief -- mentioned twice without interrupting the tutorial flow.

MENTIONED ON CAMERA
FROM THE DESCRIPTION
AFFILIATECommission earned if you click.
Storyboard

Visual structure at a glance.

open
hookopen00:00
anatomy diagram
promiseanatomy diagram01:20
three angles
valuethree angles05:17
hook vault
valuehook vault06:15
b-roll strategy
valueb-roll strategy10:13
final short playback
prooffinal short playback11:43
CTA
ctaCTA12:15
Frame Gallery

Visual moments.

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