Imported from cdeistopened/skill-stack (skill-library/x-launch-playbook/skills/x-viral-template-miner/SKILL.md). Install upstream with npx skills add cdeistopened/skill-stack --skill x-viral-template-miner. Copyright stays with the author.

X Viral Template Miner

Great posts in your niche are a renewable resource. Something that went viral last week is a proven template you can fill with your own product, screenshot, or result. This skill systematizes finding those templates and adapting them — without just copying the post.

When invoking: Ask for the user's product, niche, and a list of 3-8 competitor / adjacent accounts. If they can't name any, help them find them first.

Core rule

Trend-match, don't time-travel. What went viral a year ago won't work today. The mining window is the last 2-4 weeks. If you're looking at a post older than a month, it's a pattern study — not a template to use this week.

Mining protocol

1. List the sources. 3-8 accounts that share your ICP. Mix of: direct competitors, adjacent tools, well-known individuals in the space, community-built-in-public accounts.

2. Pull the top posts. For each account, list their top 5 posts from the last 30 days by likes. Note:

   • Media type (text, image, video, GitHub link, screenshot)
   • Post structure (hook / body / CTA shape)
   • What the audience is actually reacting to (novelty? result? visualization? contrarian take?)

3. Extract the template. Strip out the specific product and leave the shape. Examples:

   • [screenshot of GitHub repo tree] + [one-line claim about the capability]
   • [visualization of data/graph] + [contrarian observation]
   • [before/after demo GIF] + [what I was told was impossible]
   • [screenshot of real user reaction] + [this is why we built it]

4. Score for fit. For each template, answer: can I produce a genuine instance of this with my current product, or am I faking it? Kill anything you'd have to fake.

5. Remix, don't copy. Produce your own instance with your own asset. Change the voice. Change the framing. Same shape, different filling.

Signals that a template is actually viral

• Likes are >10x the author's baseline.
• Replies outnumber quote-tweets (replies are the strongest algorithm signal as of 2026).
• The post shows up in multiple accounts' feeds organically (not promoted).
• The post has been screenshot and re-shared by someone else.

Output format

When asked to mine templates, produce:

1. Source accounts (the ones you scanned).
2. Top 5 templates from the last 30 days, each with:
   • Template shape (genericized, product-agnostic)
   • Original post(s) that validated it
   • Why it worked (1 sentence)
   • How the user's product could fill it
3. 3 ready-to-post remixes using the user's actual assets.
4. 1 template to skip and why (so they understand the "fake it" filter).

Related skills

• x-account-warmup — mining + daily posting is the warmup engine
• x-launch-video-structure — launch videos also follow templates; mine video posts separately
• social-content-creation — for longer repurposing from existing content (different use case)