viral

Viral Skill

This skill is the spine of the viralman plugin. The /viral slash command and any natural-language trigger ("바이럴해줘", "make a promo post for…") route here. The skill owns the multi-step flow; the agents do the writing and review; the scripts do the posting.

Trigger phrases

Auto-trigger when the user's message contains any of:

Generic intent (router asks for platform)

These have no explicit platform, so Step 0 below MUST run the 3-way router (X / Reddit / Gitmail):

• 바이럴해줘, 바이럴 해줘, 홍보글 작성해줘, 홍보 글 써줘, 홍보해줘, 이거 홍보
• make this go viral, write a promo post, write a launch post, promote this
• 내가 한 거 자랑해줘, 이번 출시 글 써줘

Explicit-platform intent (skip router, go straight in)

The trigger names the channel(s) directly — Step 0 must be skipped and Targets set to exactly the named platform(s):

• X / Twitter only: x에 올려줘, x에 써줘, x에 포스팅, 트위터에 올려줘, 트윗 써줘, tweet about this, post this to x/twitter, write an X thread
• Reddit only: reddit에 올려줘, reddit에 써줘, 레딧에 올려줘, r/<sub>에 올려줘, post this to reddit, draft a reddit post
• Both X + Reddit: x랑 reddit에 올려줘, x하고 reddit에 올려줘, 트위터랑 레딧에 올려줘, post this to x and reddit
• LinkedIn (still supported, not in the router): linkedin에 올려줘, LinkedIn 공지 써줘, post this to linkedin

When parsing, normalize aliases: 트위터 == 트윗 == x == twitter, 레딧 == reddit. A bare reference like "스레드 만들어줘" without a platform name still counts as generic — run the router.

Other natural-language hints (treat as generic unless they name a platform)

• 한국어: "이번 출시 글 써줘", "AI 같지 않게 써줘"
• English: "make a non-AI-feeling promo post"
• 中文: "写一条不像 AI 的 推文" (names X → explicit), "写一篇 reddit 帖子" (names Reddit → explicit)
• 日本語: "AI っぽくない 投稿 を 書いて", "ローンチ 投稿 を 作って"

If the user typed /viral, follow commands/viral.md for argument parsing first.

Step 0 — Channel router (only when intent is generic)

Run only if no platform was named in the trigger (i.e., generic intent). Skip entirely when the trigger already named X / Reddit / X+Reddit / LinkedIn.

Use AskUserQuestion (multiSelect=true) with these three options, in this order:

label	header	description
X (Twitter)	X	단일 트윗 / 짧은 스레드. 빠른 도달, 캐주얼 톤.
Reddit	Reddit	특정 서브레딧에 1건. 길이·논점 자유, 서브레딧 사양에 맞춰 작성.
Gitmail (cold email)	Gitmail	비슷한 레포 스타거에게 개인화된 메일 발송. gitmail 스킬로 분기.

Then:

• X / Reddit / both picked → set Targets accordingly and continue with Step 1 of THIS skill (viral).
• Gitmail picked → hand off to the gitmail skill: stop the viral flow, follow skills/gitmail/SKILL.md from its Step 1. Do not draft a Reddit/X post in this branch.
• Mixed (e.g., X + Gitmail) → run viral flow for X, then hand off to gitmail at the end. The two share the project intent but have distinct inputs (gitmail needs project URL + recipient cap).

LinkedIn is intentionally not in the 3-way router (its CLI helper still works via the explicit trigger above), to keep the default surface focused on the user's stated three channels.

Required inputs (gather before drafting)

• Intent: what is the post about? (free text, 1–3 sentences from the user)
• Targets: which platforms? Set by Step 0 router for generic intent, or directly by the explicit-platform trigger. For /viral slash-command invocation, default is reddit, x, linkedin (per commands/viral.md). Reddit requires a specific subreddit — if not given, ask once.
• Voice mode: growth-story | casual-hype | show-and-tell | contrarian-take. Pick a default from the intent's tone; confirm if borderline.
• Anchors: at least one specific number, name, time anchor, or admission of doubt the post can hang on. If the user's intent has none, ask for one before drafting — this is what stops the output from feeling like AI slop.

Step 1 — Plan

Print a one-block plan: target platforms, mode, subreddit (if any), and the anchor(s) you'll use. Wait for the user to nudge or say "go".

Step 2 — Draft

If the user has explicitly said "I'll write the body myself" / "직접 입력할게" / pasted a finished draft, follow skills/copy-prep/SKILL.md §Manual override pattern instead — skip the writer agent and pass the user-provided body straight to the post script in Step 5. Otherwise:

Spawn the viral-writer agent once per platform in parallel. Pass it:

• The intent and anchors.
• The voice mode template from voice/modes/<mode>.md.
• The platform's register/length rules from voice/platform-norms.md.
• The 5–10 reference posts for that platform from voice/reference-corpus/.
• The banned-patterns list from voice/ai-tells.md (so the writer can avoid them up front).

Each draft is returned as plain text with no surrounding commentary.

Step 3 — Sniff & rewrite

Spawn ai-tell-sniffer on each draft separately. The sniffer:

1. Runs the heuristic checks defined in voice/ai-tells.md.
2. If clean, returns the draft unchanged.
3. If flagged, rewrites once and re-checks. Up to 3 passes total.
4. If still flagged after 3 passes, returns the cleanest version and a flag list.

Authoring (writer) and review (sniffer) MUST be different agent invocations. Do not collapse them.

Step 4 — Show drafts

Print all drafts side by side (or stacked if width is tight). For each, show:

• Platform name and length (chars / words).
• The body.
• Any unresolved sniffer flags.
• The first ~80 chars as the preview hook.

Then ask the user, per-platform: [post] [edit] [regenerate] [skip].

Use AskUserQuestion for this — and surface, in the option descriptions, that the user can attach free-form instructions in the same step:

• Post — send as-is via the matching scripts/post_*.py.
• Edit — describe the specific changes you want (tone, hook line, length cap, swap a phrase, etc.); the skill will surgically rewrite using only those instructions, then re-run the sniffer.
• Regenerate — optionally describe what to change about the framing/anchors; the skill will spawn a fresh viral-writer call with those instructions folded into the prompt, then re-run the sniffer.
• Skip — drop this platform.

When the user's response includes free-form text alongside an option (either via the option's notes annotation or via the Other free-text fallback), treat that text as additional instructions:

• For Edit: pass the notes verbatim to the writer as a "minimal-change rewrite" directive — keep the existing draft as the base, change only what the notes call out, then re-sniff.
• For Regenerate: prepend the notes to the writer's INTENT block as a USER OVERRIDE section so they take precedence over earlier defaults, then re-sniff.

When Regenerate is picked without notes, treat all prior user-supplied constraints from the same flow (added pillars, must-mention items, banned phrasings, length caps, language) as still binding. A note-less Regenerate means "try a different angle within the same constraints", not "reset everything". Carry every explicit prior constraint into the new writer prompt verbatim.

Never silently drop user notes. If the notes contradict a hard rule (e.g. "make it 500 chars" on X), apply the rule, surface the conflict in one line, and proceed with the rule honored.

If the user asked for --yes, skip this step unless there are unresolved flags. Refuse to auto-post a flagged draft.

Step 5 — Publish

For each platform with a post decision:

Platform	Script	Behavior
Reddit	viralman post-reddit --subreddit <sub> --title <title> --body -	Reads body from stdin, posts via PRAW, returns the permalink.
LinkedIn	viralman post-linkedin --body -	Posts via UGC Posts API, returns the post URN/URL.
X (Twitter)	viralman post-twitter --body -	If TWITTER_BEARER is set, posts via API; otherwise opens a https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=… URL via open and prints the URL for the user to one-click send.

Capture each script's stdout — the URL/URN — and print it. If a script exits non-zero, do not retry blindly: print the error, drop that platform, continue with others.

Step 6 — Log

Append one JSON line per posted (or attempted) item to ~/.viralman/posts.jsonl:

{"ts":"2026-04-25T16:30:00Z","platform":"reddit","mode":"growth-story","subreddit":"programming","url":"https://reddit.com/...","chars":612,"flags":[]}

This is the user's only audit trail. Never write credentials, the original intent, or the full body into the log — just metadata + URL.

Boundaries

• The skill never reads ~/.viralman/.env. Only the scripts/post_*.py helpers do.
• The skill never invents a subreddit, company page, or handle.
• The skill never posts a draft that has unresolved sniffer flags without an explicit user post decision in the same turn.
• The skill never retries a failed post automatically — failure goes to the user.