Most creators write hooks from a blank page and hope something sticks. A workflow shared by Alex Nguyen flips that order. You study a hook that already worked, then write yours. It’s faster, and it gives you a reason behind every line.
A Reddit thread in r/PromptEngineering walked through it, and the idea is simple enough to steal today. Nobody needs a new tool or a paid course. You need Claude, a handful of screenshots, and about thirty minutes.
The key idea
Understand why something worked first. Write second.
Instead of brainstorming, you upload slideshows that already went viral in your niche to Claude. Then you ask it to do the analysis you’d normally skip. The blank page goes away because you start with real examples and a clear picture of why they landed. Most people skip the analysis because it feels slow and vague. Handing it to an AI turns it into a checklist you can finish before your coffee gets cold.
Old way vs. new way
The old way: open a doc, stare at the cursor, write ten hooks, pick the one that feels least bad. You can’t say why it works, so you can’t repeat it. If it flops, you have no idea which part failed. Was it the topic, the wording, the length? You just guess again tomorrow.
The new way: feed in proven winners, extract the pattern, then generate new hooks from that pattern. Every hook has a structure behind it, so the next batch is easier than the last. When a hook underperforms, you can trace it back to the pattern you borrowed and adjust one thing instead of starting over.
A commenter pointed out that this is the classic copywriter’s swipe file: collect what works, study why, write your own. That’s true, and it’s a good sign. The method has worked for decades. AI just makes the study step take minutes instead of an afternoon.
How to run it
- 📥 Collect 5 to 10 viral slideshows or posts in your niche. Screenshots of the first slide are enough to start. Pick ones that clearly outperformed the average for that account, not just ones with a big follower count behind them.
- 🔍 Upload them to Claude and ask it to find the hook on the first slide. Ask it to quote the exact words so you can compare them side by side.
- 🧠 Ask why it works. Give it categories to pick from: curiosity, pain point, surprise, relatability. Ask for one sentence of reasoning per hook, so you can sanity check it.
- 🧱 Ask it to break down the structure, for example number plus outcome, or negative framing. A hook like “3 habits that quietly wrecked my sleep” has a number, a result, and a hint of regret. Spotting those parts is what makes the hook reusable.
- Ask for 5 new hooks for your niche, under 10 words, with a banned list. Alex bans “did you know” openers. Add your own banned phrases as you notice overused ones.
In the same chat, ask for Pinterest search terms that match the visual style of those slides. Now you know which backgrounds to pull before you open your design tool. That saves you from the second blank page, the one where you stare at a canvas wondering what it should look like.
Two upgrades worth adding
Save every hook and its breakdown in a library. Alex uses Obsidian, but a spreadsheet or a plain notes file works too. Give each entry a few columns: the hook text, the category, the structure, and how it performed once you posted something similar. The next batch starts from your own archive, not from zero.
Also, a commenter had a smart tweak. Paste slide 2 along with slide 1 and ask what slide 1 promises and what slide 2 pays off. Without that, Claude tends to label almost every hook as “curiosity” and the analysis gets shallow. The promise and payoff view tells you how the hook actually holds attention. A strong hook with a weak payoff gets a quick tap and a quick exit, so this check keeps you from copying a pattern that only looks good on slide 1.
Your move
Pick one niche, grab five slideshows that did well, and run the five steps above. Save the output somewhere you’ll find it next week. Do that three times and you’ll have a small hook library and a much better feel for why people stop scrolling.
Start with the analysis. The writing gets a lot easier after that!
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Is this a new hack or something people already do?
Mostly it’s the old swipe file that copywriters have used for decades: collect what works, study why, then write your own. The AI part just makes the breakdown much faster, so you can analyze ten slideshows in the time it used to take to read one. The core habit was never new.
Q: Why does Claude keep tagging every hook as curiosity?
Usually it’s because Claude only sees slide 1. Paste slide 2 too and ask what slide 1 promises and what slide 2 pays off. That promise-and-payoff pair gives the breakdown something concrete, and the new hooks come out sharper.
Q: How do I stop the rewrites from feeling vague?
Keep the structure that already worked and only swap the subject. You get variants of a shape that has already held attention, instead of random new lines. Once a few of those land, you can start mixing structures.
Q: Does the analysis really need to come before the writing?
Yes, and that’s the part most people skip and the part worth copying. Knowing why a hook worked gives you a reason behind each new line instead of a guess. Hooks written that way tend to be steadier than the ones you draft from a blank page.
Taking apart viral tiktok hooks with claude before writing new ones
by u/loganturner663 in PromptEngineering