The first three seconds decide whether the other thirty get watched. Enter a topic or a transcript and get opening lines built to earn them.
This one needs real processing — transcription, or a video render — so it runs in the app rather than in your browser tab. Free tier: 10 generations per day.
10 generations per day
How It Works
What the clip is about, or paste what is actually said in it.
Several distinct openings — a question, a claim, a contradiction, a number — rather than variations on one.
Use it as your spoken opening line, or as the text overlay across the first seconds.
A hook is the opening that makes someone not swipe. On a feed where the next video is one thumb movement away, the decision to stay is made almost immediately — and everything you made after that point only exists for people who got past it.
The failure mode is almost always the same: starting with context. Introducing yourself, explaining what you are about to explain, or easing in with 'so I was thinking about' all spend the only seconds you are guaranteed on material that gives the viewer no reason to stay. The fix is to open on the most interesting thing you have, and backfill context afterwards if it is still needed.
Hooks that work tend to do one of a few things: state a surprising claim, ask a question the viewer wants answered, contradict something they believe, or promise a specific payoff. What they have in common is creating a small open loop — something unresolved that staying will resolve.
Why Use This Tool
Question, claim, contradiction, number — different mechanisms, not reworded versions of one.
Often the best hook is a line already in the clip. Paste the transcript and it finds it.
Ten generations a day.
Hooks are written to work as a spoken opening or as a text overlay.
Tuned for short-form pacing rather than generic copywriting.
A hook that does not sound like you is worse than a weaker one that does. Edit freely.
Three seconds or less, spoken. Usually one sentence. If it takes two sentences to set up, it is not a hook — it is an introduction, and introductions are what lose viewers.
It opens a loop. A claim that needs backing, a question that wants an answer, a contradiction that needs resolving. The viewer stays because something is unfinished.
Both, ideally. Most short-form autoplay is muted, so on-screen text carries the hook to viewers who never hear it. Saying it too covers the ones with sound on.
That is usually the best option. Long recordings often contain a great opening line buried four minutes in — moving it to the front is one of the highest-leverage edits available.
Yes. Any swipe-based feed makes the first seconds decisive, and all three major platforms work this way.
Only if it is a question the viewer actually wants answered. A rhetorical question they have never wondered about reads as filler and costs you the same seconds a good hook would have used.
Writing a hook from scratch is the hard way. ShortsHero scores moments partly on how well they open — so the clips it selects tend to begin on a line that already works as a hook.
Find clips that open strongFree to start · No credit card required
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