394 free AI skills for media professionals — for Claude, ChatGPT, or any assistant. TV producers, journalists, podcasters, YouTubers, radio producers, newsletter writers, PR teams, screenwriters — every skill quality-tested. No coding required.
⭐ If this saves you time, star the repo — it helps other media professionals find it.
Jump to your role: Documentary Producer · Journalist · YouTube Creator · Podcaster · Newsletter Writer
What Does It Produce?
Three real outputs, unedited, from stable skills in the library:
YouTube hook — hook-generator — Input: video about why immersion fails for adult language learners
"94% of adult language learners plateau within six months. Not because they quit. Because they're doing the one thing every expert recommends — and it is actively working against how the adult brain acquires language. The science on this is twenty years old. Nobody taught it to you."
Documentary logline — logline-creator — Input: feature doc about forensic archivists recovering destroyed government records
"In a basement lab outside Washington, three archivists race to recover government records that were officially destroyed — before the statute of limitations runs out on the people who ordered the erasure."
Press release opening — press-kit-generator — Input: 6-part nature doc series, three continents, PBS-adjacent tone
"Seven years in production. Forty-two filming locations across three continents. One question that ornithologists have debated for a century: where do they actually go?"
That is the quality level across the library. Production-ready. Usable without editing.
Start In 60 Seconds
No technical setup. No account. No install.
- Open claude.ai or ChatGPT (free account — takes 30 seconds)
- Browse
skills/on this page and click the skill you want - Read the "What You Need To Provide" section
- Copy the skill text and paste it into the assistant with your own material
That's it. You're using a production-grade skill.
Pick your role for a curated starting point:
| I work in… | Start here |
|---|---|
| 📺 TV Documentary | Documentary Producer guide |
| 📰 Journalism | Magazine Journalist guide |
| 📹 YouTube | YouTube Creator guide |
| 🎙️ Podcasting | Podcaster guide |
| ✉️ Newsletters | Newsletter Writer guide |
What Is This?
This is a free collection of 394 AI skills — ready-to-use prompts and instructions that turn a capable assistant into a specialist for one specific media production task at a time.
Each skill encodes real production knowledge: the format conventions, the quality bar, the specific inputs a professional would know to provide. The output reads like it came from someone who has worked in the medium — not from a generic chatbot.
394 skills across 21 categories (plus 20 localized ES/FR variants). Every skill is quality-scored on a seven-dimension G-Eval rubric — library mean 4.38/5, with 4.0 the minimum to ship. MIT licensed.
Each skill is a plain markdown prompt file written in model-neutral language ("the assistant," not any one brand), so it works as a copy-paste prompt in Claude, ChatGPT, or any AI assistant — and the files drop straight into coding agents like Claude Code, Cursor, Codex CLI, and Gemini CLI. → Using the skills with OpenAI
Install
Every skill is a plain markdown prompt file — there's nothing to compile and no account required.
Easiest — no install (Claude, ChatGPT, or any AI assistant):
- Open the skill you want in the
skills/folder. - Copy its text.
- Paste it into your assistant with your own material. Done.
On OpenAI — copy-paste into ChatGPT, build a reusable Custom GPT, or use a skill as the system prompt via the API. Full guide + a one-command bundler that turns the library into a Custom GPT: Using the skills with OpenAI.
One command in Claude Code (installs the whole library as a plugin):
/plugin marketplace add ur-grue/autopunk-media-skills
/plugin install autopunk-media-skills@autopunk-media-skills
Claude then auto-loads the right skill for the task at hand. Browse or manage them anytime with /plugin.
Use the files directly (Cursor, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI, OpenCode, or any AI assistant):
git clone https://github.com/ur-grue/autopunk-media-skills.git
Each skill is a self-contained SKILL.md: open the file, copy it into your tool's prompt/skills location, or paste it straight into the chat. Because the skills are just markdown, they work in any AI assistant.
Who Is This For?
TV documentary producers · magazine journalists · YouTube creators · podcast producers · screenwriters · data journalists · radio producers · newsletter writers · PR professionals · researchers · social media managers · visual content creators · editors and production teams.
Quick Start
You don't write the prompt — the skill is the prompt, already written. You just paste it and add your topic. Works in Claude, ChatGPT, or any AI assistant — free accounts are fine.
Three steps, about 60 seconds:
- Open a skill — e.g.
hook-generator. Copy its text. - Paste it into Claude or ChatGPT.
- Add your material in one line — the skill's "What You Need To Provide" tells you exactly what:
Topic: why most adults fail to learn a language — and why "immersion" advice is wrong.
Format: YouTube long-form. Audience: frustrated adult learners, 28–45. Tone: direct, science-backed.
That's the whole input. Here's what the skill writes back:
Example output:
Hook A — The Broken Promise
"Every language app, every tutor, every Reddit thread told you the same thing: immerse yourself. Surround yourself with the language. Just listen. Just watch. Just live it.
You did that. For months. And you still can't hold a conversation.
Here's what they didn't tell you — and what the research has known since 1985."
Mechanism: Validates the viewer's failure as a systemic problem, not personal inadequacy. Creates urgency to hear the explanation.
Hook B — The Number
"94% of adult language learners plateau within six months. Not because they quit. Because they're doing the one thing every expert recommends — and it is actively working against how the adult brain acquires language.
The science on this is twenty years old. Nobody taught it to you."
Mechanism: Specific statistic creates credibility shock. "Nobody taught you" frames the video as access to suppressed information.
Hook C — The Confession
"I spent three years living in a country where I didn't speak the language. By the end, I could order coffee and ask for directions. That's it. Three years.
Turns out, immersion without one specific ingredient is just expensive confusion. Here's the ingredient."
Mechanism: First-person failure story creates identification, then reframes failure as solvable. "Expensive confusion" is memorable.
That's the quality level you get from every stable skill in this library.
What's In The Library
| Category | Skills | What It Covers |
|---|---|---|
| Research | 73 skills | people · background · fact-checking · academic · data & statistics · competitive · logistics |
| Writing | 57 skills | articles · broadcast · digital & social · institutional |
| Magazine Journalism | 38 skills | ideation · writing · editing · investigation · fact-checking · legal · distribution |
| TV Documentary | 27 skills | development · pre-production · scripting · post-production · localization · business |
| Media Business | 18 skills | pitching · distribution · funding · legal |
| YouTube | 18 skills | pre-production · scripting · post-production · channel strategy · business · analytics |
| Data Journalism | 18 skills | analysis · investigation · visualization · publishing |
| Production Support | 16 skills | formatting · reference |
| Editing | 14 skills | line, structure & voice editing |
| PR / Communications | 13 skills | press office · crisis comms · media relations · content |
| Newsletter | 13 skills | writing · strategy · growth · monetization |
| Podcast | 12 skills | pre-production · scripting · post-production · business |
| Radio / Audio | 12 skills | scripting · news packages · production · strategy |
| Social Media | 11 skills | content · strategy |
| Pre-Production | 10 skills | planning, scheduling & shoot briefs |
| Image Prompting | 10 skills | Midjourney · Flux · art direction · workflows |
| Screenwriting | 9 skills | development · scripting · revision · production |
| Translation | 7 skills | text · institutional · digital · reference · quality |
| Archive & Legal | 7 skills | archive research · rights & clearances |
| Audience & Distribution | 7 skills | audience growth · publishing |
| Translation & Localization | 4 skills | localization · cultural adaptation |
| Total | 394 skills | + 20 localized ES/FR variants |
Browse the full library in the skills/ folder. Skills are organized by media format, then by production stage.
Hooks
Hooks are write-time editorial guardrails. They run automatically while you work and surface non-blocking warnings when your text has common quality gaps — AI-flavoured language, missing attribution, unarchived URLs, or excessive passive voice.
Hooks advise. They never block your work or revert your edits.
| Hook | Fires on | What it catches |
|---|---|---|
| ai-slop-detector | Every edit | Banned words, throat-clearing intros, "not just X — Y" constructions |
| attribution-check | Every edit | Quotes, statistics, or claims without a named source |
| archive-on-cite-reminder | Every edit | URLs added without an archive confirmation |
| passive-voice-warning | Every edit | Passive voice frequency above 25% (configurable) |
| pre-publish-checklist | Session end | 6-item editorial checklist before you push |
Hooks compose with skills. The ai-slop-detector reads its word lists from the ai-writing-detox skill. The passive-voice-warning points you to the passive-voice-checker for a full audit with rewrites. The pre-publish-checklist ties them all together at session end.
Quality Badges
Every skill displays a status badge so you know exactly how production-ready it is.
| Badge | Status | What It Means |
|---|---|---|
🔲 planned |
Coming soon | On the roadmap but not written yet |
🟡 draft |
Written, not tested | Do not use in production |
🔵 beta |
Tested at least once | Usable — may have rough edges |
✅ stable |
Scored ≥ 4.0/5 on quality eval | Safe to use without supervision |
Only skills that pass a rigorous six-dimension quality evaluation earn stable status. The evaluation tests coherence, consistency, fluency, relevance, professionalism, and actionability — scored by Claude against a rubric aligned to real media industry standards.
See tests/EVAL_FRAMEWORK.md for the full process.
Example Outputs
Two short examples showing the quality standard across different categories. Each is a real output from the skill, generated with a generic input.
Logline · logline-creator · TV Documentary
Input: Feature documentary about a team of forensic archivists who recover destroyed government records from degraded magnetic tape.
Output:
"In a basement lab outside Washington, three archivists race to recover government records that were officially destroyed — before the statute of limitations runs out on the people who ordered the erasure."
Press Release Opening · press-kit-generator · TV Documentary
Input: Nature documentary series, six parts, following migrating bird species across three continents. Tone: prestigious, PBS-adjacent.
Output:
"Seven years in production. Forty-two filming locations across three continents. One question that ornithologists have debated for a century: where do they actually go?
On The Wing is a six-part natural history series that follows the Arctic Tern — the animal that experiences more daylight than any other creature on Earth — across the full length of its annual migration. For the first time, miniaturized tracking technology reveals a route that defies every existing model."
Agents
Agents compose multiple skills into multi-step workflows that produce complete deliverables. Where a skill handles one task, an agent orchestrates a full pipeline — from brief to finished package.
| Agent | What it produces | Skills composed | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Documentary Development Agent | Complete development package from a one-line idea | logline-creator → pitch-treatment-writer → series-bible-generator → broadcaster-pitch-writer → festival-synopsis-writer | ✅ stable (4.81/5) |
| Investigative Reporter Agent | Investigation from spark to publishable draft | story-angle-finder → source-research-brief → foia-request-writer → document-analysis-summary → claim-verification-checklist → libel-check-brief → lede-writer | 🔵 beta |
| Magazine Editor Agent | End-to-end editing pass on a submitted draft | structure-checker → copy-editor-assistant → fact-check-prompt → house-style-enforcer → headline-generator → pull-quote-selector → ai-writing-detox | 🔲 planned |
| YouTube Channel Operator Agent | Full video pipeline from topic to publish-ready package | niche-video-idea-generator → seo-title-optimizer → hook-generator → full-script-writer → b-roll-shot-list → thumbnail-concept-brief → description-seo-writer → chapter-timestamps | 🔲 planned |
| Podcast Producer Agent | Episode end-to-end | episode-concept-generator → guest-research-brief → interview-question-builder → ad-read-script → show-notes-generator → episode-summary-writer | 🔲 planned |
| PR Crisis Response Agent | Crisis response package | holding-statement-writer → crisis-statement-writer → faq-document-writer → journalist-pitch-email → spokesperson-briefing-note | 🔲 planned |
Each agent operates in two modes: PLANNING (reads your brief, presents a step-by-step plan for approval) and EXECUTION (runs the approved plan, assembles the outputs into a single deliverable). You can interrupt between steps to adjust direction.
Agents follow the same quality badge system as skills. See agents/AGENT_TEMPLATE.md for the full specification.
How To Use A Skill
Option A — Copy and paste (no technical setup needed)
- Browse the
skills/folder on this page — click any folder to open it, then click the skill file you want - Read the "What You Need To Provide" section so you know what info to include
- Copy everything from the "# Skill Title" heading down to "Known Limitations" — skip the grey metadata block at the very top of the file
- Paste it into Claude along with your own material
Option B — Clone the library (for coding agents like Claude Code, Cursor, Codex CLI)
git clone https://github.com/ur-grue/autopunk-media-skills.git
Each skill is a self-contained markdown file. Copy the ones you want into your tool's prompt or skills location, or paste a skill's text straight into the chat.
Option C — Reference from your project
Add a skill path to your project's CLAUDE.md or agent config so it loads automatically whenever you work in that project.
First Time Here?
Not sure where to start? These guides will get you up and running fast.
| Guide | What It Does |
|---|---|
| Getting Started | Pick your role, get 3 starter skills, start producing |
| Writing Better Inputs | How to brief Claude so output is usable on the first try |
| Skill Index | Find any skill by what you need to do — not by category |
| Troubleshooting | Output not right? Common fixes for common problems |
| Roadmap | What's done, in progress, and planned next |
Workflows
Most real projects use multiple skills in sequence. These step-by-step workflows walk you through an entire project from start to finish.
| Workflow | Skills | Who It's For |
|---|---|---|
| YouTube Video Launch | 8 skills | YouTube creators |
| Investigative Journalism Project | 10 skills | Investigative reporters |
| Podcast Season Launch | 9 skills | Podcast producers |
| Documentary Pitch to Greenlight | 8 skills | Documentary filmmakers |
| Newsletter From Scratch | 8 skills | Newsletter writers |
| PR Crisis Response | 6 skills | PR professionals |
How To Contribute
Got an idea for a skill? Found one that gave bad output? Want to improve an existing skill?
See CONTRIBUTING.md — there's a plain-English section at the top written for non-developers.
Short version:
- Open a GitHub Issue describing the skill you want
- The concept is reviewed and approved
- The skill is written using
SKILL_TEMPLATE.md - It goes through quality testing before it's marked
stable
Quality Testing
Every skill carries a quality score in its metadata — the library mean is 4.38/5, and 4.0 is the minimum to ship. See the auto-generated tests/EVAL_SUMMARY.md for the score of every category.
On top of that, our documented assertion suite ran 226 skills against binary checks using diverse inputs (standard, minimal, European context): 2,354 / 2,390 checks passed (98.5%). All 36 misses occurred on deliberately minimal inputs where skills correctly refused to fabricate content — the desired professional behavior. No skill failed on a well-specified input.
Full results: tests/EVAL_RESULTS.md · Methodology: tests/README.md
Related Projects
This repo exists within a growing ecosystem of agent skills for media, journalism, writing, and marketing. We maintain a curated list of 25+ related projects — peers, infrastructure, and inspiration.
Need help with your specific project?
These skills produce strong drafts in any AI. But for one high-stakes job — getting a documentary commissioned — the draft is only half of it. The pitch has to be broadcast-ready: formatted for the specific broadcaster, sourced well enough to survive an editor, positioned against what's already in development.
thepitchdoctor.io is an AI system built for exactly that: it turns a documentary idea into a broadcaster-format exposé — 98 broadcaster profiles, confidence-tagged sourcing — in about twelve minutes. The skills here are the free, general-purpose layer; the Pitch Doctor is the specialized paid product for the pitch that has to land. Your first exposé is free.
License
MIT — free to use, fork, and adapt. See LICENSE.
Maintained by Autopunk — AI workflows for media producers, from the team behind thepitchdoctor.io.
These skills encode real production knowledge from documentary development, magazine journalism, broadcast scripting, and international co-productions.
Want to contribute? See CONTRIBUTING.md. Found a bug? Open an issue.
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