# Opus Clip > The OpusClip craft skill — turn long video (podcasts, webinars, interviews, streams) into publishable short clips with AI candidate-finding, honest triage, and a human-reviewed pipeline. Use when someone wants to use OpusClip, turn a podcast/webinar/VOD into shorts, understand the Virality Score, pick a plan, pull a moment from a long recording (ClipAnything moment search), or automate a clipping pipeline. Uses the CLIPS framework. Reads captions-and-clipping + the source skill + brand-profile first. The agent plans the pipeline, credit math, and QA; the HUMAN reviews every clip and approves; WoopSocial publishes the finished exports (it does not clip or edit video). Integrity spine: the Virality Score is a PREDICTION for triage, never truth; 1 credit = 1 SOURCE minute; no unreviewed auto-post pipelines; no out-of-context clips. Distinct from captions-and-clipping (general craft), descript (long-form edit), capcut (short-form polish), and the platform publishing skills. - Skill: `social-media-skills/opus-clip` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 6 files) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds add social-media-skills/opus-clip` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/social-media-skills/opus-clip/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: DevOps & Infra - Author: social-media-skills (https://skillmd.com/u/social-media-skills) - Updated: 2026-09-09 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/social-media-skills/opus-clip --- # opus-clip The **clip-pipeline tool skill** — choose the source, let AI find candidates, inspect and rank honestly, polish the top few, ship on a drip. The agent plans and QA-checks; the **human reviews every clip**; **WoopSocial publishes**. (Ships with `tools/integrations/opus-clip.md`; pairs with the `captions-and-clipping` craft skill.) ## The POV: a first-pass clip finder, not a one-click viral machine OpusClip genuinely compresses 3–5 hours of manual clipping into minutes of processing plus review — its **ClipAnything** engine is multimodal (visuals + audio sentiment + facial expressions), so it finds moments even in wordless content, and natural-language moment search pulls one moment from a 2-hour VOD without scrubbing. But the top-1% operator holds two facts the marketing won't volunteer. **(1) The Virality Score is triage, not truth:** the only credible independent test found **~40% of generated clips get discarded** and the score **regularly mispredicts** real performance — low scorers blow up, high scorers flop. Use it to rank where your editing time goes; never as an auto-post threshold or a guarantee ("85% faster" is a self-published number with no method — the ~40% discard is the figure you can plan around). **(2) The human gate is non-negotiable:** every clip passes three questions — does it stand alone, does it **represent the speaker fairly** (the interview meaning-spine applies to clips), does it serve the audience — before anything ships. And the billing mechanic that catches everyone: **1 credit = 1 minute of SOURCE video, regardless of clips out** — trim before you upload. ## Read these first 1. **captions-and-clipping** — the general clipping/repurposing craft this tool executes. 2. The **source skill** (podcast-and-audiograms / youtube-long-form) + **brand-profile/design-and-templates** (the clip template). ## The framework: CLIPS (Depth: `references/the-clips-framework.md`.) - **C — Choose the source:** conversational long-form clips best (~8–12 candidates/hour); non-verbal genres work via multimodal analysis with higher discard — test on Free first; clean audio, no burned-in subs, trim before upload (credits bill on source minutes). - **L — Let AI find candidates:** genre + length + AI-hook configured; natural-language moment search; negative prompting (exclude intros/sponsor reads). - **I — Inspect and rank honestly:** score = triage; plan for ~40% discard; the human three-question pass — stands alone / fair / serves; the score never overrides judgment. - **P — Polish the top few:** edit only the top 3–5, approve clean mid-scorers, discard without guilt; fix the hook's first line, caption errors, reframe drift, boundaries; one brand template across the batch; auto-music OFF → licensed/native audio at publish. - **S — Ship on a drip:** batch-schedule spread across the week → WoopSocial; download exports promptly; study real retention vs the scores monthly and recalibrate. ## The reality (verify-quarterly) 2026 OpusClip: ~10M users / ~172M clips; ClipAnything (multimodal + moment search + negative prompts); speaker diarization layouts; ReframeAnything tracking; ~97% caption accuracy **vendor-claimed** across 20+ languages (QA anyway); AI B-roll; XML export to Premiere/Resolve (Pro). **The score:** 0–99 across Hook/Flow/Engagement/Trend — independently found to mispredict; ~40% discard (BIGVU test, attributed); no independent benchmarks. **Credits:** 1 = 1 source minute; +1 per direct X post; failures reported eating credits; projects reported vanishing after subscription ends — download promptly. **Tiers (≈, conflict — verify in-app):** Free = evaluation only (watermark, 3-day expiry, no score/editor); Starter ≈ $15/150 min; Pro ≈ $29 (~$14.50 annual)/300 min = the production tier; Business = custom, **API reported Business-only**; editor gating conflicts across sources. Reliability: reported processing hangs, no public status page/SLA — build slack. Trustpilot 4.0 with ~22% one-star (attribute). Full detail: `references/opus-clip-2026-reality.md`. The weekly loop, per-clip QA, credit-math worksheet, score recalibration, and two worked examples: `references/workflows-and-templates.md`. ## Honest scope (never violate) - **The agent** plans (pipeline, prompts, triage, QA, credit math, drip) and drafts fixes; the **human reviews every clip** and approves (the agent can't see video; never fabricates "that clip works"). **Automation honesty:** API reported Business-only; Zapier/Make exist lower; **no unreviewed auto-post pipeline on any tier.** **WoopSocial publishes** approved exports (its scheduler-vs-OpusClip's is a stated choice); it does **not** clip/edit/score video; native audio/stickers are added in-app by the human. - **The score spine:** a prediction — triage, never truth, never quoted as a metric. **The fairness spine:** clips keep context and meaning; no manufactured endorsements or gotchas (deception/defamation); consent/ likeness rules apply. **Never fabricate** tiers, gates, capabilities, or metrics — verify in-app; build slack for the reliability reality. (Full scope: `references/scope-and-connections.md`.) ## Distinct from its siblings (route correctly) **opus-clip (this)** = the OpusClip-specific pipeline · **captions-and-clipping** = the general clipping craft (read first; `tools/integrations/clipping.md` covers the multi-tool layer — `tools/integrations/opus-clip.md` goes deep on this tool) · **descript** = the long-form talk edit (master there; its Underlord clip flags overlap) · **capcut** = short-form styling/polish beyond the built-in editor · **short-form-video-script** = the retention craft the QA applies · **tiktok-video-publishing / instagram-reels-publishing / youtube-shorts** = platform publish specifics. ## Where this connects Reads first: **captions-and-clipping** + the **source skill** + **brand-profile/design-and-templates.** Pulls the master from: **descript** (the edited episode), **livestream-and-realtime** (VODs), webinars. Feeds: **capcut** (polish), the **platform publishing skills**, **content-recycling**, **scheduling-and-queue.** Publishes via: approved exports → **scheduling-and-queue → WoopSocial.** Tool file: **`tools/integrations/opus-clip.md`.** Measure with: native + **analytics-and-reporting** on per-clip retention vs score (recalibrate monthly) — never fabricated. ## Definition of done A clip pipeline that treats OpusClip as a first-pass finder: source chosen and trimmed for the credit mechanic (1 credit = 1 source minute), candidates generated with genre/negative prompts set, the batch triaged by score as ranking only with a planned ~40% discard, every clip passed through the human three-question gate (stands alone / fair to the speaker with context intact / serves the audience), only the top 3–5 edited (hook line, caption accuracy on names/jargon, reframe drift, boundaries) with one brand template across the batch and auto-music off in favor of licensed/native audio, the approved set drip-scheduled and published via WoopSocial with exports downloaded promptly, and real retention tracked against the scores monthly to recalibrate; tier/editor/API gating verified in-app before subscribing (API automation claimed only at the reported Business tier; no unreviewed auto-posting anywhere); **no score treated as truth, no out-of-context clips, no fabricated tiers/capabilities/ metrics**; and correctly distinguished from captions-and-clipping, descript, capcut, and the platform publishing skills.