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Agent skill

Ig Viral

by Jakeschincariol in Jakeschincariol/instagram-agent-skill

Go and find the reels that are actually working right now in the user's niche, rank them by how far each beat its own account, name the hook formula each one used, and turn that into a swipe file…

MITAuto-check passed

Install Ig Viral

skills CLI
$ npx skills add Jakeschincariol/instagram-agent-skill --skill ig-viral -a claude-code

Project install by default; add -g for ~/.claude/skills/.

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install Jakeschincariol/instagram-agent-skill ig-viral --agent claude-code

Project scope by default; add --scope user for a personal install. Needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later (public preview).

Manual copy
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Jakeschincariol/instagram-agent-skill.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/ig-viral .claude/skills/ig-viral && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.claude/skills/ instead of .claude/skills for a personal install. The folder must contain SKILL.md.

Claude Code skills documentation · loads skills from .claude/skills/

Facts

Skill name
ig-viral
GitHub stars
760
Token cost
~1.8k tokens
SKILL.md length
863 words
Files
2
Skills in repo
13
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
MIT

At a glance

Go and find the reels that are actually working right now in the user's niche, rank them by how far each beat its own account, name the hook formula each one used, and turn that into a swipe file…

  • Works in 5 steps: pick the accounts → go and look → rank it → …
  • The user says find viral videos
  • SKILL.md covers The one idea that makes this…, Step 1: pick the accounts, Step 2: go and look and Step 3: rank it, plus 3 more sections
  • Runs Python scripts from its folder; calls python3; reaches youtube.com

What it does

Ig Viral is an agent skill from Jakeschincariol/instagram-agent-skill. Go and find the reels that are actually working right now in the user's niche, rank them by how far each beat its own account, name the hook formula each one used, and turn that into a swipe file they can shoot from. Use when the user says "find viral videos", "what's working right now", "what are people posting in my niche", "reverse engineer this account", "build me a swipe file", "why is this reel doing numbers", or asks what to make next and has no evidence to answer with.

Its SKILL.md is about 1.8k tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. The skill folder holds 1 other file (for example `swipe.py`).

The repository describes itself as: Thirteen Claude skills that run an Instagram account: Reels off 26 scored hook formulas, a viral research skill, a caption linter, and a humanizer. Free, MIT. The licence is MIT.

When your agent uses it

  • The user says find viral videos
  • Whats working right now
  • What are people posting in my niche
  • Reverse engineer this account

Example prompts

  • “find viral videos”
  • “s working right now”
  • “what are people posting in my niche”
  • “/ig-viral”

Requirements

  • Python 3

Workflow steps

5 steps, taken from the step headings in SKILL.md.

  1. pick the accounts
  2. go and look
  3. rank it
  4. say what it means, carefully
  5. turn it into something to shoot

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit d03c56b. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

  • Tool permissions

    Pre-approves nothing: there is no allowed-tools line, so your agent's usual permission prompts apply.

    From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

  • Runs code

    Ships script files (Python), which the agent can run.

    Shell commands in SKILL.md call:

    • python3

    From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.

  • Network

    Hosts in commands or code, which the agent is likely to contact:

    • youtube.com

    From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.

  • Credentials

    Names no API keys, tokens, secrets or passwords.

    From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

Context cost

Ig Viral loads about 1.8k tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 123 tokens; SKILL.md has 863 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~123
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches
~1.8k

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

Auto-check passed

The automated check found no risky patterns in SKILL.md.

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); files beside SKILL.md are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from Jakeschincariol/instagram-agent-skill at commit d03c56b, republished under its MIT licence (© Jakeschincariol). 863 words, ~1,751 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/ig-viral/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder). This skill also uses 1 other file; get the full folder from GitHub.
name
ig-viral
description
Go and find the reels that are actually working right now in the user's niche, rank them by how far each beat its own account, name the hook formula each one used, and turn that into a swipe file they can shoot from. Use when the user says "find viral videos", "what's working right now", "what are people posting in my niche", "reverse engineer this account", "build me a swipe file", "why is this reel doing numbers", or asks what to make next and has no evidence to answer with.

ig-viral

The research skill. Everything else in this pack writes; this one goes and looks. Run it monthly, not daily. Formulas last a season.

One tool lives in this folder and it runs:

bash
python3 swipe.py captured.tsv --out ~/.claude/instagram/swipe.md

The one idea that makes this worth doing

Raw views are not evidence. An account with two million followers doing 400,000 views had a quiet Tuesday. An account with four thousand followers doing 400,000 views found something, and that something is copyable.

So everything here ranks on the outlier multiple: views divided by that account's own recent median. Anything above 3x is a signal. Anything below 1.5x is that account's normal day and it teaches you nothing, no matter how big the number looks.

Collect accounts within about 10x of the user's own size. A formula that works at 2M followers often works because it is at 2M followers.

Step 1: pick the accounts

Ask the user for 6 to 12 accounts, or propose them and get approval:

  • 4 direct - same niche, same offer, slightly ahead.
  • 4 adjacent - different niche, same audience. This is where formats get borrowed from before anybody in the niche has them.
  • 2 to 4 outsized - much bigger accounts, for format only, never for cadence or tone.

Also ask them to open their own Saved collection. It is the fastest and most relevant corpus that exists and it is already filtered by their taste.

Step 2: go and look

Use whatever browsing tool this session actually has: an in-app browser, a browser extension connected to the user's own Chrome, or a computer-use tool. There is no API for this and there does not need to be, because the volume is small enough to read.

Rules that are not negotiable:

  • Never log into Instagram on the user's behalf and never ask for a password. If a page needs a login, the user is the one who is already logged in. Drive their browser with them present, or ask them to paste.
  • This is reading, not scraping. Ten accounts, a dozen reels each, at human speed. Automated collection at volume violates Instagram's Terms of Use and gets accounts action-blocked. Do not build a crawler, do not use a scraping service, and do not loop this in the background.
  • Copy the formula, never the video. The hook shape, the structure, the length, the pattern of cuts. Not their script, not their voice, not their edit. Attribute every row in the swipe file to the account it came from.

What to capture per reel, in the creator's own words:

fieldnotes
accounthandle
followersfrom the profile
medianeyeball the last 12 reels and take the middle view count
viewsthis reel
hookthe first line, spoken or on screen, verbatim including bad grammar
on-screenthe first text card, if different
lengthseconds
ctawhat they asked for at the end

Median is the important one. Without it you are back to ranking by follower count, which is the thing this skill exists to stop.

When Instagram will not show you enough: the same hook grammar runs on YouTube Shorts, where view counts and transcripts are public and no login is involved. It is a legitimate second corpus, and the spoken hook is easier to get:

bash
# view counts for a channel's shorts
python3 -m yt_dlp --flat-playlist --playlist-end 40 -J \
  "https://www.youtube.com/@HANDLE/shorts" > channel.json

# the spoken first line of one short, from its auto-captions
python3 -m yt_dlp --skip-download --write-auto-subs --sub-langs "en.*" \
  --sub-format json3 -o hook "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID"

Take every caption word with a timestamp under 3.0 seconds. That is the hook, as said, not as written.

Show full SKILL.md (305 more words)Show less

Step 3: rank it

Fill a tab-separated file with a header row and run the script:

account	followers	median	views	hook
@someone	48000	11000	412000	nobody tells you your first 30 reels are supposed to flop
bash
python3 swipe.py captured.tsv --out ~/.claude/instagram/swipe.md

It computes the outlier multiple, names the hook formula using the same 26 formulas /ig-reel writes from, scores each hook with hookscore.py, and prints what separates the top third from the bottom third.

Step 4: say what it means, carefully

Report three things and no more:

  1. Which formulas over-index in the top third, with counts. Two formulas appearing four times each across six accounts is a finding. One appearing twice is not.
  2. What the top third have in common structurally that the bottom third do not: hook length, whether the payoff is visual, whether the first frame moves, where the ask is.
  3. The unclassified rows. Every hook the classifier could not name is either noise or a formula that is not in hooks.json yet. Read them by hand. This is the most valuable column in the output and it is the reason the script prints the count.

Then state the sample size and the confidence in plain words. Forty reels across six accounts supports a claim. Twelve does not, and saying so is the difference between research and horoscopes.

Step 5: turn it into something to shoot

For the top three formulas, write the user's version: their own story, their own number, in the shape that is working. Hand each one to /ig-reel with the formula id already chosen.

Never hand back "make a reel like this one". Hand back a hook line they could say tomorrow.

Output

SWIPE  ·  38 reels  ·  7 accounts  ·  baseline: account median

OUTLIERS (above 3x)
  38.4x  hook 86  #3  Nobody Tells You   @acct_a    412,000  (median 10,700)
  11.2x  hook 79  #9  The Steal          @acct_c    180,000  (median 16,100)
  ...

WHAT IS OVER-INDEXING
  #3 Nobody Tells You   x5 in the top third, 0 in the bottom
  #2 Negative Command   x4
  median hook length    8 words up top, 19 at the bottom

UNCLASSIFIED (6)
  Two of these are the same shape and it is not in hooks.json: a hook that
  opens on someone else's comment read out loud. Worth adding.

YOUR VERSION
  #3  "Nobody tells you the first 20 proposals are supposed to lose."
  ...

Write the swipe file to ~/.claude/instagram/swipe.md. /ig-reel and /ig-plan both read it, which is the point: after this runs once, the rest of the pack is working from the user's own evidence instead of from defaults.

Nothing is posted, followed, liked or messaged by this skill. It reads.

© Jakeschincariol, MIT. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file

Files

SKILL.md and 1 other file in skills/ig-viral of Jakeschincariol/instagram-agent-skill.

  • SKILL.md
  • swipe.py

Open the folder on GitHubat commit d03c56b

Compare with similar skills

Ig Viral next to the 5 skills that share the most tags, products or categories with it. Stars are the repository's; “used in” counts other GitHub owners with a copy.

Ig Viral compared with similar skills
SkillStarsUsed inTokensAuto-checkLicenceRepo updated
Ig Viral this skillJakeschincariol/instagram-agent-skill760—~1.8kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Viral Generator Buildersickn33/agentic-awesome-skills47k2 repos~2kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Right To Erasurethedaviddias/Front-End-Checklist74k—~512Automated safety check: PassMIT
Viral Generator Builderdavila7/claude-code-templates33k5 repos~1.3kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Agent Reelssickn33/agentic-awesome-skills47k—~2.1kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Viral Video Teardown Remakesickn33/agentic-awesome-skills47k1 repos~3.2kAutomated safety check: PassMIT-0

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More from Jakeschincariol/instagram-agent-skill

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  • Ig Comment

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  • Ig Dm

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  • Ig Human

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Questions about Ig Viral

What does Ig Viral do?

Go and find the reels that are actually working right now in the user's niche, rank them by how far each beat its own account, name the hook formula each one used, and turn that into a swipe file…. Ig Viral is an agent skill from Jakeschincariol/instagram-agent-skill. Go and find the reels that are actually working right now in the user's niche, rank them by how far each beat its own account, name the hook formula each one used, and turn that into a swipe file they can shoot from.

When should I use Ig Viral?

Ig Viral fits situations like: the user says find viral videos; whats working right now; what are people posting in my niche; reverse engineer this account.

How do I install Ig Viral in Claude Code?

Run `npx skills add Jakeschincariol/instagram-agent-skill --skill ig-viral -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/ig-viral in Jakeschincariol/instagram-agent-skill) into .claude/skills/ig-viral in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.

How do I install Ig Viral in Codex?

Run `npx skills add Jakeschincariol/instagram-agent-skill --skill ig-viral -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/ig-viral in Jakeschincariol/instagram-agent-skill) into .agents/skills/ig-viral in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.

Can I use Ig Viral in Cursor, Gemini CLI or GitHub Copilot?

Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot and OpenCode also load SKILL.md folders. With the skills CLI, run `npx skills add Jakeschincariol/instagram-agent-skill --skill ig-viral -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/ig-viral, .gemini/skills/ig-viral, .github/skills/ig-viral and .opencode/skills/ig-viral in your project.

What does Ig Viral need to run?

Going by SKILL.md and its folder, Ig Viral needs Python for the scripts in its folder and the command-line tools its instructions call (python3). Our summary lists: Python 3.

Does Ig Viral access the network?

SKILL.md names 1 domain. In commands or code: youtube.com; the agent is likely to contact it when it follows the instructions. This is read from the text; nothing was executed.

Is Ig Viral safe to install?

Our automated static check of SKILL.md found no risky patterns, such as piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files or hidden Unicode. It is not a guarantee. Review the folder before installing.

What licence does Ig Viral use?

Ig Viral is published under the MIT licence (the repository's licence). It allows redistribution, so the full SKILL.md is shown on this page.

How many tokens does Ig Viral use?

About 1.8k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 7k characters). Agents keep only the skill's name and description in context until a task matches; then they load SKILL.md in full.

What are the alternatives to Ig Viral?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Ig Viral: Viral Generator Builder (sickn33/agentic-awesome-skills, 47k stars), Right To Erasure (thedaviddias/Front-End-Checklist, 74k stars), Viral Generator Builder (davila7/claude-code-templates, 33k stars) and Agent Reels (sickn33/agentic-awesome-skills, 47k stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains Ig Viral?

Jakeschincariol (a GitHub user) maintains it in Jakeschincariol/instagram-agent-skill, which has 760 GitHub stars. The repository holds 13 skills in this directory. The repository was last updated on September 13, 2026.

Source: Jakeschincariol/instagram-agent-skill on GitHub. Facts on this page come from the repository at the commit we read; the author's words are quoted as theirs.