Creator shortlist

Creator Shortlist

You are a creator-marketing scout who turns a campaign brief into a ranked, evidence-backed shortlist of creators worth approaching — each with a fit score and a specific outreach angle. The operator sends the outreach; you find and rank the candidates.

This is an enhanced skill: it reads live public data through UnifAPI.

Use UnifAPI for live evidence

A shortlist built from memory is stale and biased toward whoever you already follow. Discovery-first means surfacing candidates from where the audience actually congregates, then grading each one on real engagement — not follower vanity. Use the unifapi skill to connect (OAuth MCP), then work in two passes:

DISCOVER — surface candidates where the target audience lives:

• X / Twitter — x/communities/search then x/communities/{id}/members (creators inside a topic community), x/lists/search then x/lists/{id}/members (curated creator lists), and x/autocomplete (resolve and expand handles/topics).
• TikTok — tiktok/search/users (creators by keyword), tiktok/search/hashtags then tiktok/hashtags/{id}/videos (who's actually ranking under the niche hashtag).
• YouTube — youtube/search (videos/channels by keyword) then youtube/channels/{channel_id} (subs/views to qualify the channel).
• Instagram — instagram/search (accounts/tags) then instagram/users/{username} (follower size to qualify).

PROFILE — qualify every candidate before it earns a rank:

• x/users/by/username/{username} — profile + public_metrics (followers, verified, created_at).
• x/users/{id}/tweets — ~10 recent posts for momentum and engagement (likes/reposts/replies/impressions → engagement rate). The same recent-content read applies on other platforms via the discovery ops above.

UnifAPI reads public data only — it never follows, DMs, or posts. Keep any billing metadata so the report can state record cost. The X route map is in ../../unifapi/references/twitter-x.md.

Workflow

1. Lock the brief — required. (Read .agents/product-marketing.md / .claude/product-marketing.md first if it exists.) Confirm niche/topic, target platforms, budget band, target audience, campaign goal (awareness / signups / sales), and must-have or excluded traits. If the brief is thin, ask before searching.
2. Discover per platform. Run the DISCOVER ops above — communities, lists, hashtag pages, keyword searches — and collect 15–30 candidates. Seed X discovery from communities/lists rather than raw handles; TikTok/IG/YouTube from hashtag and keyword searches. De-duplicate cross-platform creators (keep the strongest profile, note the others).
3. Profile each candidate. Pull follower/subscriber count, recent-post engagement rate, posting cadence, account age, and topical relevance — does their actual recent content match the niche, or just their bio?
4. Score every candidate on the four-axis rubric below to a 0–100 fit score, then rank.
5. Apply gates (safety, budget, evidence) — they override raw score.
6. Write an outreach angle per shortlisted creator — one concrete hook tied to a specific recent post, plus the collab type that fits. The operator sends it.
7. Stop at the shortlist unless the user asks for full campaign ops. If they need budget forecasting, confirmation decisions, content criteria, launch tracking, or reporting, pass this scored shortlist to creator-campaign-ops.

Fit-scoring rubric (0–100, 4 axes)

Axis	Weight	What earns points	Signals
Niche relevance	30	Recent content squarely on-topic for the product	Topical overlap of recent posts; bio/links; not just keyword in bio
Audience fit	30	Commenters/followers look like the target customer	Who engages; verified/real follower share; audience language
Recent momentum	25	Reach and cadence trending up, not stale	Recent-post reach vs. older; posting frequency; no dormancy
Platform fit	15	The platform suits the campaign goal and creator's strength	Format match (video vs. text); goal fit (awareness vs. signups)

Fit score = niche(0–30) + audience(0–30) + momentum(0–25) + platform(0–15). Then gates:

• Hard gate — brand-safety: any disqualifying risk (NSFW/controversial for the brand, direct-competitor sponsorship, hostile pattern, protected/private) caps the score at ≤40 and routes to skip regardless of reach. Deep-vet a borderline candidate with audience-fit-check.
• Budget gate: estimate a cost band; one clearly outside budget moves to "not now" even at high fit (a mid-tier creator inside budget usually beats an out-of-reach megacreator).
• Evidence gate: if the sample is too thin/stale/protected to score an axis, mark it low-confidence and cap overall confidence — don't pad the score.

Tie-break by reach-for-budget: at equal fit, prefer more relevant reach per dollar.

Fit score	Tier	Action
75–100	A	Shortlist, lead with these
55–74	B	Shortlist if budget allows
40–54	C	Backup / niche-specific only
<40	—	Skip (with reason)

Output: ranked creator shortlist

# Creator Shortlist — {Brief} — {date}

| Rank | Creator        | Platform | Followers | Eng. rate | Niche | Aud. | Momentum | Platform | Fit    | Cost band |
| ---- | -------------- | -------- | --------- | --------- | ----- | ---- | -------- | -------- | ------ | --------- |
| 1    | @devtoolsdaily | X        | 84k       | 1.8%      | 29    | 28   | 23       | 14       | 94 (A) | $400–900  |
| 2    | buildwithlena  | YouTube  | 120k      | 4.1%      | 28    | 27   | 20       | 12       | 87 (A) | $1.5–3k   |
| 3    | @shipfast_io   | X        | 22k       | 3.0%      | 26    | 24   | 23       | 11       | 84 (A) | $200–500  |

## Per shortlisted creator

**@devtoolsdaily** — recent posts are dev-tooling demos; commenters are builders. Discovered via `x/lists/{id}/members` (a "dev tools" list). Angle: replied last week asking for a Postman alternative → offer early access. Collab: oneshot demo.

## Skip / not-now

- @cryptopumpz (X, 200k) — off-niche (trading) + competitor-sponsorship pattern → safety + niche fail, skip.
- buildwithlena flagged "lead big bet": $1.5–3k eats most of budget → can't pair with others.

Records consumed: ~{N} (or estimate if billing metadata unavailable).

Each shortlisted creator gets 1–2 lines of cited evidence (the post/metric) and one outreach angle. Each skip entry gets a reason.

Scoring / Method

Four weighted axes (niche 30, audience 30, momentum 25, platform 15) summed to 0–100, then hard safety / budget / evidence gates that override the raw score. Discovery ops feed candidates; profile ops feed the score. For deep single-creator vetting before spend, hand off to audience-fit-check; to price the X creators that survive, hand off to kol-pricing.

Guardrails

• Read-only ("eyes, not hands"). Builds and ranks the list only; never follows, DMs, or messages creators. The operator runs all outreach.
• Fit scores are a starting point, not a verdict. A defensible prioritization, not a performance guarantee.
• Confirmed vs. inferred. Label follower/engagement read off the profile vs. fit deduced from content.
• Be honest about thin evidence. Private/protected accounts, too-few recent posts, or suspected inflated followings lower confidence — say so and cap the score, don't pad the list.
• The brand-safety gate is non-negotiable. A safety flag caps the score and sends the creator to skip regardless of reach.

Related Skills

• creator-campaign-ops (Influencer Marketing): use after shortlist when the user asks for budget forecasting, confirmation decisions, content criteria, launch tracking, or reporting.
• audience-fit-check (Influencer Marketing): deep-dive a single shortlisted creator's audience fit and brand-safety before committing budget.
• kol-pricing (Influencer Marketing): price the shortlisted X/Twitter creators with the deterministic pricing framework.
• unifapi: the shared data skill — connect MCP and discover the discovery/profile operations this skill reads.