LinkedIn Hook Writer

Purpose

Generate attention-grabbing opening lines for LinkedIn posts that earn the click to "...see more" — without resorting to the clickbait patterns that mark content as AI-generated or engagement-farmed. The hook must be honest: it promises something the post actually delivers.

Voice Loading

This skill's entire value depends on producing hooks that are NOT on the anti-slop banned-openers list.

1. Read ../voice-master/references/anti-slop.md — apply the Universal and Professional / LinkedIn sections. The Banned Openers subsection under Professional / LinkedIn is the hard constraint for this skill.
2. Load the user's voice via voice-master: read ../voice-master/SKILL.md and follow its User Calibration Overlay section. Voice-master loads social-medium exemplars from the user overlay (or template fallback with warning if no overlay).

If no overlay is present, voice-master falls back to generic voice guidance and warns — note this in your output.

How LinkedIn Hooks Work

LinkedIn shows approximately the first 140-210 characters of a post before truncating with "...see more." The hook must accomplish two things in that space:

1. Create genuine curiosity — the reader wants to know more
2. Signal quality — the reader believes the rest is worth their time

A hook that creates curiosity but signals low quality gets skipped. A hook that signals quality but creates no curiosity gets polite scrolling.

Hook Patterns (Authentic)

The Specific Detail

Start with a concrete, surprising detail that makes the reader want context.

• "We migrated 340 microservices in 6 weeks. Here's what almost killed us."
• "My team's Kubernetes bill dropped 40% because of a config nobody checked."
• "I interviewed 12 candidates last month. One question separated the strong ones."

Why it works: Specific numbers and details signal real experience. The reader wants the story behind the detail.

The Honest Admission

Start by admitting something most people in your position wouldn't say.

• "I've been doing cloud architecture for 8 years and I still don't fully understand IAM policies."
• "We shipped a feature last month that I knew wasn't ready. Here's why."
• "I got fired from a job I was good at. The reason surprised me."

Why it works: Vulnerability from someone with credibility is rare on LinkedIn. It signals an honest post, not a performance.

The Counterintuitive Claim

State something that goes against conventional wisdom — but only if you can back it up.

• "The worst career advice I ever followed: 'always have an answer.'"
• "We stopped doing code reviews. Our quality went up."
• "Senior engineers who can't explain things simply aren't actually senior."

Why it works: Disrupts autopilot scrolling. The reader needs to see the reasoning.

The Observation

Notice something specific about the industry, the job, or the professional world that others feel but haven't articulated.

• "There's a specific kind of tiredness that comes from meetings about meetings."
• "Every cloud migration proposal I've seen includes the same lie."
• "The gap between 'we use AI' and 'AI is useful to us' is enormous."

Why it works: Recognition — the reader sees their own experience reflected and wants to see if the post develops it further.

The Mid-Story Start

Begin in the middle of a situation, not at the beginning.

• "The Slack message said 'production is down' and I hadn't had coffee yet."
• "Halfway through the demo, the CTO asked a question I couldn't answer."
• "The third interview round was when I realized I didn't want the job."

Why it works: Narrative momentum — the reader is dropped into a moment and wants to know what happened.

Generation Process

1. Understand the post — Read the full post content or the angle from the content calendar. The hook must honestly represent what follows.

2. Generate 3-5 options — Use different patterns. Never generate 5 variations of the same pattern — that's what AI does when it's lazy.

3. Anti-slop check — Verify each option against the banned openers list. Delete any that feel like they could appear in a "LinkedIn post template."

4. Rank — Evaluate each hook on: curiosity generated, quality signaled, authenticity, connection to the post body.

5. Present with reasoning — Show the user options with brief notes on why each works or might not work.

Output Format

## Hook Options for: [Post Topic/Angle]

### Option 1 (Pattern: [pattern name])
> [Hook text]
**Strength:** [Why this works]
**Risk:** [Why it might not — or "low risk"]

### Option 2 (Pattern: [pattern name])
> [Hook text]
...

### Recommended: Option [N]
**Reasoning:** [Why this one best fits the post and voice]

References

• ../voice-master/references/anti-slop.md — Banned openers and AI-tell patterns (Universal + Professional/LinkedIn sections)
• ../voice-master/SKILL.md — Voice authority; follow its User Calibration Overlay section to load social exemplars from the user overlay
• ../linkedin-post-writer/SKILL.md — Post types and writing process