Thumbnail ab tester

Skill rahulcommercial/claude-code-for-content-creators/skills/thumbnail-ab-tester

Generates multiple thumbnail concepts for the same clip and ranks them by hook strength using contrast, face presence, text legibility, and emotional cue heuristics. Trigger when user wants thumbnail options, A/B test thumbnails, or improve CTR on Reels/Shorts/YT.From its SKILL.md

Install

npx -y skills add rahulcommercial/claude-code-for-content-creators --skill thumbnail-ab-tester

Assembled from the repository path, not quoted from the project. Check it against their README if it does not work.

One thing to look at

0 stars0 stars. Stars are a popularity signal and not a quality one, but at this level it is likely that nobody has read this closely except its author, and you would be relying on your own review.

SKILL.md

2.4 KB, 586 tokens by cl100k_base, as published. Nobody here has run it

Thumbnail A/B Tester

Generate 3-5 thumbnail concepts, score them, ship the winner.

When to use

User has a video and wants 3+ thumbnail variants.
User wants critique on an existing thumbnail.
User wants to know which still frame from a clip is strongest.

Variant generation strategy

For one clip, produce variants across these axes:

Axis	Option A	Option B	Option C
Frame	Hook moment (start)	Climax (mid)	Payoff (end)
Text	One word	Short phrase	None (visual only)
Face	Tight crop (eyes visible)	Medium shot	Object only
Contrast	Dark bg + bright subject	Inverted	High saturation

Pick one option per axis → 3-5 thumbnails total. Don't generate 30 — too much noise.

Scoring rubric (0-10 each, sum / 40)

Factor	What to check
Hook clarity	Can a viewer read the story in < 1 sec?
Face / emotion	If a face: is the emotion strong & specific?
Text legibility	Readable at 320px wide (IG feed size)?
Contrast	Subject pops from background?

Heuristics (the boring stuff that matters)

Faces with visible eyes outperform face-from-behind ~2:1 on IG.
Bright single-colour backgrounds (yellow, red) beat busy stills.
Text on thumbnail: ≤ 4 words. Beyond that, no one reads.
Avoid feed-camouflage: if your thumbnail looks like 5 others on the explore grid, it loses.

When to NOT use a thumbnail

IG Reels cover image is shown on grid only, not feed. Optimise for grid coherence + first-frame hook in the video, not feed clicks.
YT Shorts: thumbnail = first frame by default. Either accept it or pin a custom cover.

Output

Variant A — score 32/40
  Frame: t=2.4s (climax)
  Text: "₹4,300 in 14 min"
  Notes: high contrast, specific number, face in lower third
  Strongest factor: hook clarity

Variant B — score 28/40
  ...

Winner: A
Why: specific number + face emotion drives the highest CTR pattern.

What NOT to do

Don't fabricate emotions / numbers in thumbnails. Clickbait that doesn't deliver tanks your reach next post.

What ships with it

Read from the repository

Just SKILL.md. No reference files, no scripts.