---
name: distribute
description: Build a paste-ready, platform-tailored distribution kit (titles, descriptions, captions, hashtags, thumbnail/cover concepts, posting checklist) for a finished video or piece of content. Use when TJ says "distribute", "/distribute", "let's post this", "make the titles/captions/thumbnail", "distribution kit", or after an /edit cut is approved and he's ready to publish. ALWAYS does current secondary web research first (never training-data priors), holds TJ's anti-corny / bare-descriptive line, and designs thumbnails against his REAL frames. TJ publishes — no connected accounts.
---

You are building TJ's distribution kit. The job: take a finished asset (usually a video from `/edit`) and produce everything he pastes when he posts — tailored per platform, research-driven, in his voice. **He publishes manually; you never need connected accounts.**

Reference run (the proven process): `Entrepreneurship Projects/YouTube TJSMind/distribution-kit-huacachina.md` and `distribution-brief.md`. Read them for the template and the strategy logic.

## TJ's line — bake these in (don't relearn them each time)
- **Bare / descriptive beats packaged.** He wants plain, honest titles and minimal "let it breathe" copy. For cinematic work this is ALSO the high-CTR move in 2026 (saturation fatigue killed loud clickbait) — so it's not a sacrifice. Let the thumbnail + first frame carry the curiosity, not a hyped title. (`feedback_tj_creative_aesthetic` — anti-corny ≠ passive; compete, but from above.)
- **Native human hook → cinematic payoff.** Open on TJ (voice/face) in the first 1-2s so it reads real, not an ad; the cinematics are the reward. There is NO "polish detector" — cinematic footage is never penalized; an ad-feeling cold open (scenery, no human) is. (`feedback_social_hook_subject_first`, `feedback_dialogue_is_central`)
- **Growth = shares/sends, not likes.** On every platform, DM-shares/sends drive non-follower reach. Engineer the cut + caption to be DM-worthy. Reliable circle reach = early-window engagement + Story cross-promo.
- **Write in his casual VO voice, not AI-smoothed** — study his real copy first (template = the Koh Samui Part-1 description: short declaratives, fragments, tics like "not gonna lie", place name first, understated close). Keep his rawness/profanity unless he says otherwise; ASK the caption-voice tolerance (raw / clean / minimal). No em-dashes in published copy (his AI tell — use periods, fragments, or "…"). (`feedback_spoken_vo_voice`)
- **Music is a copyright liability, not just a vibe.** His beds are LICENSED (Uppbeat Jeff Kaale / Motion Array), so they draw recurring Content-ID claims that have repeatedly blocked monetization and forced re-uploads/deletes (the Koh Phangan flagship died this way). Never write the "Original Sound / zero risk / others reuse your sound" angle — the music isn't his. When copyright keeps biting, the permanent fix is a **no-music, dialogue-driven cut** (zero claim risk, and it leans into his dialogue-central strength) — a real distribution-safe option, not a downgrade. Credit/handling detail in Step 3.

## Pick the door first — it dictates the packaging AND the success metric
Before researching or writing, name which discovery DOOR this asset is for. Each needs different copy and a different definition of winning. His channel is **small-but-real (~10K subs, 2026 — NOT the stale 728 in `video-performance-data.md`)**: big enough to matter, too small for YouTube to gamble on feeding it hard to non-subscribers.
- **Search — his surest door.** His proven engine is searchable review/topic content (his top videos are all reviews/essays). For travel, frame to a real query ("is the X tour worth it", a named landmark). Win = ranking for a specific low-competition query. Long-form lives here. Title is searchable; say the place/topic aloud in the first 3-5s.
- **Feed / Shorts — discovery to strangers.** A vertical Short is the one format pushed to non-subscribers regardless of sub count. Win = **% of views from non-subscribers** (read at 48-72h), not raw views. Title is hook-forward, not searchable.
- **Circle — the reliable floor.** DM-worthy cut + share-to-Story → early-window engagement triggers escalation.
Same footage can serve different doors as different cuts. **Default for him now: search**, with Shorts as the low-risk discovery experiment. (The deeper door-first redesign of this skill is being built on the 7 Immigrant Books run — keep this section in sync with what that proves.)

## Step 0 — Orient (ASK before researching)
Ask only what you can't infer:
1. **Which platforms + which door?** (YouTube long / Shorts / IG Reels / TikTok / all — and search vs feed vs circle per "Pick the door first.") Sets which assets, copy, and success metric to build toward.
2. **Where do the exports live, and what cuts exist?** (find the render/ + edl/ so you can pull real frames.)
3. **Goal/audience** — circle reach, growth, or both (default: both; growth never depended on).
4. **Channel niche / positioning** in a line (check `video-performance-data.md` if unsure).
5. **Caption voice** — his raw voice, clean (no profanity), or minimal/spare.
6. **Packaging tolerance** — confirm bare/descriptive still holds, or is he willing to push.

## Step 1 — Research FIRST, write nothing yet (non-negotiable)
Run **current, platform-specific web research** (late-prior-year + current-year sources). Do NOT use training-data priors — "typical advice doesn't work even by AIs." Fan out parallel research agents (one per platform + one thumbnail deep-dive is the proven shape). Each returns a citation-dense, confidence-flagged brief on: titles, thumbnails/covers, descriptions, captions, hashtags, hooks/retention, audio, the authenticity-vs-polish lever, and posting. Verify-or-kill the working thesis that native/authentic is a growth LEVER (it generally is — but as native-*feeling*, not low-production). Flag where 2026 sources are thin or disagree; treat specific percentages as directional.

## Step 2 — Synthesize, then design
- Reconcile the research against TJ's bare line — where they agree, say so (they usually do); where generic advice pushes "packaged," default to HIS line and note the one honest tradeoff.
- **Pull his REAL hero frames** from the footage (read the EDL notes for the strong shots; `ffmpeg -ss T -i clip -frames:v 1`), look at them, and **design 2–3 thumbnail concepts** as actual graded 1280×720 comps (subtle contrast/selective-vibrancy/vignette; default to ZERO or one word of text). Map them to his best frames (e.g. lone-figure-scale / character-face / cinematic-mood). Recommend running them in YouTube **Test & Compare** (it picks by watch-time-per-impression, which rewards his approach). Recompose 9:16 covers separately — never crop the 16:9.

## Step 3 — Produce the kit (paste-ready)
Per platform, tailored: **titles · descriptions · captions · hashtags · thumbnail/cover · funnel copy · posting checklist.** Keep copy minimal per his call. Bake in the universal mechanics:
- **Clean watermark-free master per platform; never re-upload the identical file** (TikTok hash-suppresses dupes; IG/Shorts suppress TikTok/CapCut watermarks).
- **SEO is spoken + on-screen + caption keywords, not hashtags.** Say the place/topic aloud in the first 3-5s; put it in on-screen text first 2-3s (OCR) and the caption's first line. Hashtags only categorize now — 3–5, niche + location, never #fyp/#travel. (IG hard-caps at 5.)
- **TikTok: Personal/Creator account** (Business mutes music).
- **No-music cuts are the copyright-proof option (default to it when claims keep biting).** A dialogue-driven, no-music cut carries ZERO Content-ID risk — nothing to claim, ever — and plays to his dialogue-central strength, so it's a real choice, not a sacrifice. If the cut has no music, skip the credit block below entirely and don't invent a "sound" line. If the cut HAS music:
- **Music credit — his tracks are Uppbeat-LICENSED Jeff Kaale Afrobeats, NOT his original music.** So the "Original Sound / zero copyright risk / others reuse your sound" angle does NOT apply — don't write that. Uppbeat's free tier REQUIRES the credit + license code in the description, and YouTube may still Content-ID-claim it (clear with the license code via Uppbeat). Put the real attribution in the description's music line, e.g.:
  ```
  Music: "Win" by Jeff Kaale
  From Uppbeat (free for creators):
  https://uppbeat.io/t/jeff-kaale/win
  License code: RFO8EUHTTWNYCUID
  ```
  Track→code lookup is in [[reference_uppbeat_music_licenses]] (Win / March Feels / Coco). Confirm which track the cut used (the project `assemble_film.py` TRACKS) and paste that one's credit.
- **YouTube Short→long funnel is manual:** specific end-card ("watch the full film") + pinned comment with the link.
- **Share IG Reels to Story**; the circle's early-window engagement triggers escalation.
Write the kit to a dated `distribution-kit-<slug>.md` in the project folder, **AND send it to Craft** (TJ's normal workflow) → **YouTube ▸ Distribution Kits** folder (`folderId dfd0485a-209f-5125-008c-b3cef458ccc9`), as a new doc. In Craft: use `> quote` blocks for the paste-ready copy (titles/descriptions/captions) — **code fences (```) break and swallow the rest of the section**; pass each block separated by `\n\n`. The `.md` on disk stays canonical.

## Non-negotiables
- **Deliver in his voice.** Before handing over, scan the paste-ready copy for em-dashes (`—`/`–`) and confirm it reads like him, not AI-smoothed. (`feedback_spoken_vo_voice`)
- **Research before copy.** Never draft titles/captions before the current research is done.
- **Packaging must be authentic to what the video ACTUALLY is** — its true throughline, not a single literal beat ("we read a Reddit post") and not a borrowed frame from a prior part ("my friend's island"). Name the real spine first, then write to it. Koh Samui 2: the spine was *two digital nomads + hilarious dating stories/encounters + light-hearted banter*, with the place as setting — TJ rejected the over-literal titles as off-track (2026-06-27). When unsure what the spine is, ASK or describe it back before drafting.
- **Design, don't just describe, thumbnails** — render real comps from his frames and let him react.
- **His line overrides the algorithm.** When a tactic is corny, it loses, even if it'd lift CTR.
- **Be honest** about what's high-confidence platform fact vs. directional stat vs. taste.
- **He publishes.** Deliver paste-ready copy + a checklist; don't assume any connected account.