Product Hunt hook generator
A hook generator writes the opening line of a post or a video, which on most feeds is the only line anyone sees before deciding whether to stay. This one asks what the piece is actually about and where the hook has to work, then writes several openings in different shapes so you can throw most of them away.
The hook is made out of the content. One concrete detail here is worth more than any option below.
Optional. Skip it if the honest answer is everyone.
A spread is the better default. The point of generating several is to find out which shape your material wants.
Free, no account. Written for Product Hunt.
How to use it
- Describe the post or video in a line or two, including the part you would tell a friend first.
- Pick where the hook has to work, because a spoken opening and a truncated first line fail in different ways.
- Name the audience if it is narrower than everyone.
- Generate, then read each one out loud and delete the ones you would be embarrassed to say.
- Keep two, use them on different pieces, and watch which shape holds people past the opening.
The hook is the only line most people ever read
Every feed on this list hides most of a post behind something the reader has to do. A tap on "more", or a swipe that never arrives. Whatever you wrote after the first line is behind that gate, and the first line decides whether anyone opens it. That is why this is a separate tool from a post generator rather than a checkbox on one.
the fold is not the character limit
For text the gate is a truncation point, and it moves. The length ceiling a network publishes is a different thing, and it governs what you may write rather than what a scrolling reader sees. Product Hunt allows 500 characters, counted in Unicode code points. Wherever the fold falls, it falls short of that, and shorter again on a phone. No network publishes where it is, so write as though the cut comes earlier than you expect and put the load-bearing words in front of it.
a first line clipped mid-clause
The specific failure is a first line clipped mid-clause, so the reader sees a sentence going somewhere and no reason to follow. "After six months of running our onboarding the way everyone told us to, we finally..." is a wasted opening even though it is a fine sentence. The version that survives the fold says the thing: "We cut onboarding from eleven steps to four."
The habit that causes it is writing the first line last, after the post is finished and you are in the mood to introduce it. Write the claim first, then decide whether anything really has to come before it.
on video the gate is the swipe
For video the gate is the swipe, and the opening has to work before the viewer has committed anything at all. Same principle, faster clock.
There is no button to earn here, so nothing further in tells the viewer to stay. And the caption sitting under the video truncates as well, which makes its first line a second opening doing the same job in a different medium.
Bait is a hook that spends the reader's trust
"You won't believe what happened next." "Stop scrolling." "Nobody is talking about this." "Read this before it's too late." These get sold as hook frameworks, and they are the most expensive lines you can open with, for two reasons that compound.
The first is mechanical. Networks publish policies against engagement bait, meaning content whose main move is to demand a reaction rather than to deliver something, and they rank it down where they detect it. The patterns above are the training set. A line that reads as bait to a person reads as bait to a classifier, and the reach you were reaching for is the thing you lose.
The second cost is worse and slower. A reader who taps a promise and finds nothing behind it has learned something about your account, and they apply it the next time your name appears. You can spend an audience this way over a few months without ever seeing the transaction, because the number that drops is one you never had: the people who would have stayed.
"you won't believe what happened next"
The shape here is a promise with the subject taken out. "You won't believe what happened", "This changed everything", "Wait for it". They run on reflex rather than interest, and the only thing that pays them off is something extraordinary. Most posts are not extraordinary, so most readers who take the bait finish having been charged for nothing.
The swap costs one edit: put the subject back. "This changed everything" becomes "The one setting that halved our support queue". The curiosity is intact and the line is now a claim the piece can pay.
"stop scrolling" and the other commands
A command tells the reader what to do before giving them a reason to do it. "Stop scrolling", "Read this before it's too late", "Everyone needs to see this". Someone already scrolling past reads that as an interruption from an account with nothing in hand yet, and the ones who obey it once are the ones who mute you later.
There is a mechanical cost on top. Wording that demands a reaction is close to what platform policies describe when they define engagement bait, so the line you wrote to buy reach is the line most likely to lose it.
"nobody is talking about this" when people are
This one makes a claim about the conversation that a reader can check in about ten seconds. Say it about a subject with a dozen posts this week and you read as either dishonest or badly informed, and either way you lose the reader who knows the field. That reader was usually the one you were writing for.
If the thing genuinely is not discussed, describe the thing and let the silence around it be obvious. A specific claim nobody else has made does the same work without asking to be trusted first.
the honest version of the same move
The honest version of the same move is available and no harder to write. Open a real gap rather than a fake one. "Nobody is talking about this" is bait. "We ran the migration twice because I misread one line of the docs" is a gap somebody wants closed, and closing it is a piece you can actually make.
The difference is where the gap sits. A real gap comes from a fact you put on the table, and the reader wants the rest of the story around it. A manufactured gap comes from hiding the subject, so the moment the subject appears the reader is done.
A video hook and a text hook are different objects
A video hook has two jobs at once. It has to work as the first thing said, at whatever speed you actually talk, and it has to work as text on the screen for everyone watching with the sound off. Those constraints pull against each other. Spoken openings want the rhythm of speech and a few extra words. On-screen text wants to be short enough to take in at a glance.
A text hook has no audio to lean on and one enemy instead, which is the fold. It also lives longer. A video hook is spent in the opening moment and then the video carries itself, while a first line stays at the top of a card in the feed, gets quoted when someone shares it, and gets re-read by anyone who scrolls back.
write the spoken line, then cut it for the caption
The way through is to write the spoken line first, then cut it to its noun and its verb for the caption. Say "I rebuilt our whole onboarding flow last month and the support queue halved", put "onboarding rebuild, support tickets halved" on the screen. Both carry the same claim at two speeds, and the second is not a transcript of the first.
Do the cutting by ear. Read the spoken version at the speed you actually talk, then take out every word a viewer could work out from the picture in front of them.
the intro that spends the opening
Before the hook there is usually something else. A logo animation, or a greeting and the breath that comes before it. Those run on the same clock the hook does and they say nothing, so a viewer who is still deciding spends that decision on your channel branding instead of on your material.
The greeting is the hardest one to hear in your own footage, because saying hello is what a person does when a camera turns on. Watch the file back and find the frame where the content starts. Everything in front of it is trim.
where the words sit on the screen
A hook written on the frame has to survive the interface drawn on top of it. Full-screen video surfaces stack their own buttons and progress bars around the edges, mostly along the bottom and down one side, and text placed there is either covered or competing with a control. The upper middle of the frame is the part nothing else claims.
Contrast decides the rest. Words dropped over a busy shot are readable to you, because you already know what they say, and illegible to somebody seeing them for a fifth of a second. Put them on a solid block or over the plainest part of the picture, at a size you can still read with the phone at arm's length.
what does not carry between the two
The thing that carries worst between the two is the pause. On video, a beat of silence before the payoff can work, because the viewer is already watching. In text the same delay is a wasted clause sitting in front of the fold.
The move fails going the other way too. A line built to survive truncation is compressed hard, and read aloud it sounds like a headline being announced rather than a person starting to speak.
What the generator cannot see
A model has read an enormous amount of writing about hooks and cannot see either of the two things that decide which hook works for you this week. It does not know what your niche is currently saturated with, and it has no access to how your own last few pieces performed. Those are the actual inputs a good hook decision runs on.
So the output here is a set to cut down rather than a ranked answer. Any tool presenting a generated hook as the best one is describing a comparison that never happened. Generate eight, delete six on the read-aloud test, keep two you would defend.
What a model genuinely helps with is escaping your own default. Most people write the same opening move every time without noticing, usually a windup sentence that exists to get the writer started rather than to get the reader in. Seeing one idea opened eight different ways is what makes the habit visible.
Whatever you keep has to be true to the piece. A hook is a promise and the content is the payment. A strong line in front of a thin piece does more damage than a dull line in front of a good one.
The shapes below are the moves worth having in rotation. Knowing which one you reached for is what turns a run of posts into evidence about your own audience.
open a question the piece answers
This works when the question is one the reader has already half asked, and it dies when the question is rhetorical. "Why does every onboarding flow end up with eleven steps?" is worth an answer. "Do you want more customers?" is a sales script. The test is whether you would want the answer if somebody else had written the line.
Do not answer it in the same breath. A question with its answer attached has closed the gap it opened, and the reader has nowhere left to go except onward.
state a position people can argue with
A position is a claim somebody could hold the opposite of. That is what makes it readable and what makes it risky, so pick one you will still defend in the replies at eleven at night. Sanding it down into something nobody disagrees with produces a line nobody reads either.
The strongest version contradicts advice your audience has heard repeatedly, when you have your own reason for it. Everyone has been told to post daily, so a line saying you stopped and what happened to your numbers is a piece only you can write. The same line without the reason is contrarianism, and readers price that in fast.
start in the middle of a moment
Drop the reader into something already happening. The message that arrived at eleven at night, the deploy that went out with the wrong config. No setup, and the reader assembles the context from what comes next, which is how a story told out loud works.
It needs a real moment behind it. When the piece has no scene in it, this shape manufactures one, and the manufactured version is easy to spot because the details go vague exactly where a memory would get sharper.
name a mistake you made
This one buys attention with something that cost you, which is why it holds. A named error with a price attached tells the reader you did the thing rather than read about it, and it earns the rest of the piece, because now the fix is worth having.
The failure mode is the humblebrag: a mistake picked because it flatters you, like working too hard or shipping too fast. Choose one that was your fault and had a bill you can name.
lead with the number
When your material has a result in it, the number can carry the opening on its own, as long as it is yours and you say what it counts. A figure with no unit is decoration. A figure attached to work you did is about the only proof that fits in a first line.
Two things sink it. A number that flatters without being interesting, usually a running total of everything you have ever done, and a number the reader cannot place because you never said what normal looks like.
put the two numbers next to each other
A before and after is the same shape with the distance made explicit. Where you started, where you ended. It reads fast because the reader does the subtraction themselves, and the size of the gap is the entire claim.
It is also the shape that gets faked most often, so it arrives carrying suspicion. Anyone who has seen a hundred of these is already looking for the part left out: how long it took, what else changed at the same time, whether the starting number was low because you had only just begun. Put the awkward detail in the piece and the opening survives contact with the reader who is checking.
name the problem the reader already has
The other direction is to open with their situation instead of yours. Somebody who recognises their own week in your first line has a reason to keep reading that no claim about yourself can manufacture, and the recognition has to be exact. "If your posts get views and no followers" lands on a specific person. "If you want to grow" lands on nobody.
Two things ruin it. Flattery, where the problem you name is one that makes the reader sound good for having it, and the version that turns into an instruction, since a line telling somebody to watch because they are struggling is a command wearing sympathy. Describe the situation and stop. Let them decide it is theirs.
which shape the piece is asking for
You do not pick freely. A teardown of your own numbers wants the result at the front. A walkthrough wants the end state, because the reader is deciding whether the destination is worth the trip. A story wants the moment it turns. A review wants the verdict, since everyone arriving at one already knows what the thing is and came for what you concluded.
When two shapes both fit, write both and read them back to back. That comparison takes a minute and beats any general rule about which shape performs, because the answer depends on material only you have seen.
Questions
Is the Product Hunt hook generator free?
Yes, and there is no account. It calls a model on a server rather than running in your tab, so it carries a rate limit that the character counter on this site does not need. If you hit it, wait a few minutes and carry on.
How long should a hook be?
Short enough to say in one breath, for both kinds. On video that keeps the opening inside the window where the viewer is still deciding. In text it keeps the whole claim in front of the fold, which is the only length rule that reliably matters. If a hook needs a comma and a subordinate clause to land, it is a first paragraph rather than a first line.
Why will it not write "You won't believe what happened"?
Because that shape is what networks call engagement bait, and their published policies say they rank it down. It also teaches your readers that your openings overstate, which is slower and more expensive than one post underperforming. The tool writes the honest version of the same move: a real gap, opened with a real detail out of your brief.
Can I use the same hook on another network?
The idea travels and the form rarely does. A spoken opening that runs a couple of seconds is a long first line in a feed that truncates, and a line built to survive truncation sounds clipped when you read it aloud. Regenerate for the surface instead of pasting across, and keep the claim identical so you are testing the wording rather than the topic.
Should the hook be spoken, written on screen, or both?
Both, in two different lengths. Plenty of feed video is watched with the sound off, so a hook that exists only in the audio is invisible to those viewers. A hook that exists only as on-screen text abandons everyone listening while they do something else. Write the spoken line, then cut it to the words that fit a glance for the caption.
How many hooks should I test?
One per piece, because that is all most surfaces give you. What you are actually testing is the shape, across a run of pieces, so generate a set, keep the two you would defend, use them on different posts and write down which one you used. After ten or so pieces you have evidence about your own audience, which is worth more than any list of frameworks. Running several openings against each other on the same piece is only possible where the platform offers it, and most do not.
Will the hooks sound like me?
Not on the first pass. What comes back is close to how people write on these feeds and nowhere near how you in particular talk, so read each one out loud and rewrite the words your mouth trips over. Keep the structure and the angle. The wording is a draft, and a line you would never say out loud is one your regular readers will spot as somebody else's.
Is a hook the same as a title?
No. A hook is the first line inside the piece, read by someone who has already arrived. A title sits outside the piece in a grid, a search result, or a subscription list, and it is read by someone deciding whether to arrive at all. They are written at different moments and follow different rules, and on some networks a title cannot be edited after you post. The title generator on this site covers that field.
Does what I type stay in my browser?
No. This tool needs a model and a model does not fit in a browser tab, so your brief goes to our server and on to the model that answers it. Nothing here asks you to make an account. Treat the box the way you would treat any chat window: fine for a draft, wrong for an unreleased number or a client name.
Can GrowSocialelion post to Product Hunt?
Not yet. Product Hunt is in the catalog with a published status and it is planned, but its adapter has not shipped, so nothing here claims we can publish to it today. The tool above is free either way. See the status of all 49 networks.