@aicopycoders/exodus 2026.6.2400

package/assets/references/editing-rules.md

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+# Editing Rules — the voice, the steer-prompts, the finish
+
+> Part of the creative-strategy framework set; compact index lives in `exodus-strategist`.
+> Editing is a first-class stage of the wheel, not an afterthought: how you push an ad until
+> it's right and clean it to a human voice. In Exodus, the editing pass is built into the
+> `genesis` run as a per-variant menu — and every good edit you make should bake back into the
+> brand primer so the next run inherits it.
+
+## The steer-prompts (drop-in directions)
+These are the named moves you steer a draft with. The first five map directly to the Genesis
+per-variant editing menu (Natural Language / Shorten / Cut / Simplify / Make Better); the rest
+are the same kind of small, repeatable direction.
+- **Natural language / anti-AI** — too AI → natural; too staccato → natural; short clipped
+  sentences → natural.
+- **More bounce** — conversational, musical flow.
+- **Shorten (to a word target)** — read through and **cut specific lines**; do NOT compress
+  sentences into "little turds."
+- **Cut** — be anal; remove fluff lines that don't move the argument forward.
+- **Simplify (reading level)** — swap high-falutin Latin words for concrete, earthy
+  Germanic-rooted words; ~8th grade → 3–5th grade. *Not* dumber, *not* less intense — just
+  brute-simple. (This is the "caveman copy" bar.)
+- **Make better** — "weave" in (don't bolt on) proof / logic / insight; concrete visual
+  language; intensify the pain or the benefit so they *feel* it. (Name the Copy Block —
+  `copy-blocks.md` — instead of saying "better.")
+- **Fix transitions** — add "and / because / so" connective tissue.
+- **Fix logic** — does this make sense; stress-test specific ideas.
+- **CTA** — explicit (formula below) + clear characterizations.
+- **Find & replace (semantic)** — e.g. "20 seconds" → "30 seconds" across all ads.
+
+## Core sentence rules
+- **One sentence per line. One idea per line.** Each line stands alone; break separate ideas
+  apart (keep as one line only if tightly connected and flowing).
+- **No staccato fragment phrasing** ("No this. No that." / "Not X — it's Y") as a rhythm
+  trick. Only break for rhythm if it genuinely serves the story.
+- **Write ACTUAL sentences, not fragments.** If it wouldn't make sense read aloud, fix it
+  ("Empty." → "It's empty.").
+- **Bounce + natural transitions** — break compound thoughts so each idea breathes, guide
+  between them with And / Because / So / But. Reads like someone telling a story, not a list.
+
+## Story structure
+- **Tell it linearly.** Open on a specific night / specific moment and unfold in real time.
+  Don't open vague or jump around in time.
+- **Story FIRST, explanation SECOND** — let the emotional beat land before pulling back to
+  the research/mechanism.
+- **Don't cite specific years** — "researchers found" / "a study showed." Keep it timeless.
+
+## Endings & CTA
+End on **intrigue** with a fun, relatable characterization of the solution (feels like a
+discovery, not a pitch) — "a little 30-second thing I do every morning with my coffee." Then
+support an explicit CTA.
+**CTA formula:** *[explicit action phrase] + [casual characterization] + [brief benefit
+tease, 2–4 lines: mechanism/transformation] + [personal proof payoff: first-person, specific,
+before→after].*
+
+## Anti-AI — avoid
+- *Structural:* "statement: then list"; balanced "This isn't X, it's Y"; three-part lists;
+  formal transitions (However, Moreover, Indeed, Subsequently, Furthermore, Additionally).
+- *Red-flag phrases:* "Not just X, but Y," "Whether X or Y," "This means that…," "Let's
+  explore/dive into," "Picture this," "The key/truth is," jargon (leverage, drive results,
+  optimize), intensifiers (ultimately, essentially, simply), "One might argue…," "It is worth
+  noting…"
+- *AI words:* hurdles, harnessing, unveil, realm, delve, dive in, embark, navigate, tapestry,
+  craft, dazzle, evoke, transform, profound, game-changing, insights, synergy, leverage.
+- *Embrace instead:* varied paragraph lengths; fragments-as-speech starting And/But/So;
+  conversational asides; small imperfections; clear opinions without hedging; pattern
+  interrupts; spontaneous questions; big sentence-length variation; specific personal details;
+  conversational flow over perfect structure.
+
+## The finish
+Re-hook (new hooks from the hook primer + the edited ad) → select → headlines (from the
+headline primer) → select → format into a clean doc → on to Creative.
+
+## Feedback bakes back (the compounding loop)
+This is what makes Editing compound instead of repeat. Two loops:
+1. **Repeated edits → reusable steer-prompts.** When you find yourself giving the same
+   correction across ads, it's no longer a one-off — it's a button. Capture it so it becomes
+   a direction you press, not a sentence you retype.
+2. **Feedback → primer rules.** The corrections and dos/don'ts you give a draft get written
+   back into the brand primer (tag them so they're visible, e.g. `[banked YYYY-MM-DD]`). The
+   next `genesis` run reads the updated primer and inherits the fix. A correction you make
+   once should never have to be made the same way twice.

package/assets/references/hook-quality-checklist.md

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+# Hook Quality Checklist
+
+This document covers everything about evaluating and creating hooks in the Genesis system: the quality checklist, the 10 power elements, the emotional viciousness scale, and pre-hook ideation techniques.
+
+The hook is the highest-leverage line in the whole ad — **spend ~80% of your writing time on the hook** (and what immediately follows). The rest is structure the bots are good at.
+
+---
+
+## Hooks must be EMOTIONALLY VICIOUS
+
+Not mean — **vicious.** A vicious hook grabs something the reader already feels (a fear, a shame, a dread, a suspicion) and **squeezes it so hard they physically cannot scroll past.** It goes right for the throat in the *very first line* — no throat-clearing, no warm-up. A polite, comfortable, hedged, or vague hook is a **dead hook.** If it doesn't make someone flinch, gasp, or feel personally called out, it's not vicious enough. **There is always a more vicious version** — go find the one that flinches.
+
+**Every word must earn its place — protect the charged word.** "Sexless" can't become "unfulfilling"; "killing" can't become "hurting." If you reach for a softer, safer, clinical synonym, STOP — that instinct is the enemy. Push to the **edge of reality** (almost unbelievable, without crossing it). This is more art than science, built by saturating your brain on ads.
+
+### The 8 principles
+1. **Relevance in the first line** (the first 10–20 words). Three ways in: **pain/condition call-out** · **belief call-out** ("they told you red meat would clog your arteries") · **general openness** (broad intrigue — the hardest, biggest bets).
+2. **Emotionally charged language** — visceral, embodied: *banned, sexless, stink, lying, die, naked, killing, terrifying, beg.*
+3. **Natural intrigue / open loops** — promise a story or reveal the reader *has* to resolve.
+4. **Stakes / rubbernecking** — real, present consequences they can't look away from.
+5. **Specificity & tangibility** — "a 300-page report from 1910," not "an old report." Specific reads like a fact; vague reads like an ad.
+6. **Doesn't read like an ad** — reads like news, a story, a confession, or an insight; the payoff is catharsis/intrigue, not a pitch.
+7. **Caveman / Germanic language** — short, blunt, 5-year-old-simple. The French perspire, the Germans sweat — use the German word.
+8. **Consequence first, mechanism later** — lead with the wound, not the scalpel. ("THIS habit spikes cortisol" is mechanism — invisible to the reader. Lead with what happens to *them*.)
+
+---
+
+## Hook Quality Checklist
+
+Every hook must hit ALL of these:
+
+- ☐ **10-20 words before the fold** — This is the text that appears before "See more" on Facebook
+- ☐ **Tangible and specific** — Symptoms, numbers, concrete details (not abstractions)
+- ☐ **Creates unresolved curiosity** — Reader MUST know what comes next
+- ☐ **Relevant to audience pain + things they already know** — Speaks to their world
+- ☐ **Promises value** — Insight, reframe, new information
+- ☐ **Subtle sensationalism, not clickbait** — Bold but credible
+- ☐ **Emotionally charged / visceral / visual language** — Physical, embodied words
+- ☐ **Widely relevant** — Doesn't disqualify too early with niche specifics
+- ☐ **Simple enough to understand immediately** — Not overly long or hard to digest
+- ☐ **Reads like information/news, NOT like an ad** — Editorial tone
+- ☐ **Level 3 emotional viciousness** — Emotional bomb, not vague or hinting
+
+---
+
+## The 10 Power Elements
+
+Every hook should draw from as many of these as possible:
+
+1. **Novel** — Something they haven't seen before
+2. **Shocking** — Disrupts expectations
+3. **Engaging** — Demands continued reading
+4. **Controversial** — Challenges accepted wisdom
+5. **Specific** — Numbers, names, details
+6. **Unpredictable** — Doesn't go where they expect
+7. **Bold** — Makes a strong claim
+8. **Emotional** — Triggers a feeling, not just a thought
+9. **Urgent** — Creates time pressure or consequence
+10. **Topic-framed** — Clearly about their world
+
+---
+
+---
+
+## Pre-Hook Ideation
+
+Before generating hooks mechanically, extract SEEDS from the winning ads and brief:
+
+### Step 1: Mine the Material
+Read the brief and ask: what are ALL the interesting ideas, standout lines, sentiments, mechanisms? Don't just look at the obvious angle — look at everything buried in the material.
+
+### Step 2: Promotion Check
+For each seed, ask: how could I PROMOTE this idea into the main hook? A hook seed can come from ANYWHERE — body copy, mechanism, proof point, comment language, a single powerful phrase.
+
+### Step 3: Apply These Three Techniques
+
+#### Transfers
+If the hook uses one concept, ask what CATEGORY that concept belongs to, then substitute.
+
+Example: If the hook uses coffee, coffee is a RITUAL. What other rituals could replace it?
+- Gym routine
+- Sex
+- Morning routine
+- Alcohol tolerance
+- Bedtime routine
+- Prayer/meditation
+
+The transfer preserves the emotional structure but creates a fresh hook.
+
+#### Reframes
+"It's not X, it's Y" — take the audience's existing belief about the cause and flip it.
+
+Examples:
+- "It's not low T, it's too high cortisol"
+- "It's not your willpower, it's your gut bacteria"
+- "It's not your age, it's your inflammation"
+- "It's not genetics, it's your sleep architecture"
+
+The reframe installs a new mechanism belief while invalidating the old one.
+
+#### Promotions
+Take a line buried in body copy and make it the opening. The most powerful ideas are often hidden in paragraph 3 or 4 of an existing ad, not in the hook.
+
+Process:
+1. Read through winning ad body copy
+2. Highlight any line that creates a physical reaction (flinch, curiosity, discomfort)
+3. Ask: what if THIS was the opening line?
+4. Build the rest of the ad from that starting point
+
+---
+
+## Hook Relevance Rules
+
+Hooks need to be relevant on two dimensions:
+
+### 1. Pain Point (or desire)
+The hook must clearly touch the audience's core concern. If the market is health-focused, the hook must signal "this is about your health" within the first few words.
+
+### 2. Things They Know
+The hook must reference things already in their awareness — symptoms, people, experiences, cultural touchstones.
+
+Examples of leveraging what they know:
+- "Benjamin Franklin used it. President Roosevelt relied on it." (known figures)
+- "Do you wake up at 3 a.m. having to pee?" (known symptom)
+- "Your granddad smoked a pack of cigs a day, washed it down with whiskey and still lived to 100." (known cultural observation)
+
+Sometimes the relevance is explicit ("Are you not hungry for breakfast in the morning? That's high cortisol.") and sometimes implicit ("A single 300-page report published in 1910..."). Both work. The audience must recognize the topic is FOR THEM within seconds.
+
+---
+
+## Examples of Good Hooks (For Style Reference)
+
+These demonstrate the qualities above — tangible, specific, creating curiosity, emotionally charged, reading like news:
+
+- "Are you not hungry for breakfast in the morning? That's high cortisol."
+- "They told you red meat and butter would clog your arteries."
+- "Most people who die in their sleep never realize their body gives them three quiet warnings before it's too late."
+- "This is the body of an average senior in 1940… And this is the body of an average senior today."
+- "A single 300-page report published in 1910 that wiped out an entire branch of medicine in less than a year."
+- "Ladies, did you know that if your farts stink really bad..."
+- "Can I show you something terrifying?"
+- "Meet the tribe that's baffled scientists for decades."
+- "Are your shoes killing you?"
+- "Why did heart disease rates suddenly explode in the 1940s?"
+- "Inside: The 'banned' hospital department that kept 75-year-olds' hearts strong."
+- "They call it the 'medical apocalypse' of the 1900's…"
+
+Note the emotionally charged words: farts, baffled, terrifying, killing, explode, banned, medical apocalypse. These words do the heavy lifting.
+
+---
+
+## The generation loop
+
+Prime on the brand's **hook primer** → mine seeds from the brief/winning ads → generate 10 hooks against the bar → **double-pass** (take the best, apply **Transfer / Reframe / Promote**, push to Level 3, generate 10 more) = 20 total → human selects → winners go back into the hook primer. That last step is the loopback: every selected hook makes the next run's primer stronger.

package/assets/references/iterations.md

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+# Iterations — CASHED (variations · scaling on winners)
+
+> Part of the creative-strategy framework set; compact index lives in `exodus-strategist`.
+> When an ad wins, you don't just make more random ads — you decide which of three tracks to
+> run and, for variations, **turn exactly one knob.** This is the Iterations stage of the
+> wheel; it's where most of the budget actually lives.
+
+Three tracks for a winner:
+- **Net-new** — a new core idea. The priority, and what keeps the account from fatiguing.
+- **Variations** — freeze the winner, turn ONE knob (CASHED, below).
+- **Scaling** — amplify, change nothing.
+
+---
+
+## CASHED — the knobs (turn exactly one)
+- **C — Concept/Claim** — what you assert (the idea + its facts, proof, mechanism)
+- **A — Angle** — the psychological frame you wrap the claim in
+- **S — Style** — visual style / medium / who delivers it
+- **H — Hook** — the opening
+- **E — Edit** — tone & format dials (length, valence/intensity, register, pacing, CTA)
+- **D — Demographic/Who** — the whole segment (the biggest swing — it borders net-new)
+
+**Decision test — "smallest box that changed?"** Go big→small, stop at the first yes:
+new WHO → **D** · claim/mechanism changed → **C** · same claim, new FRAME → **A** · same
+claim+frame, new LOOK/presenter → **S** · same everything, new OPENING → **H** · only
+tone/length/pacing → **E**. Naming the smallest box keeps a "variation" from quietly becoming
+five uncontrolled changes you can't read the result of.
+
+## IDENTIFY first — decode the winner before turning a knob
+Read off what the winner is currently *set to*, then change only one thing:
+Desire → D · Avatar → D · Awareness → D · Problem/Positioning → C · Mechanism → C ·
+Authority/Proof → C · Emotion → E · Frame → A.
+
+## The high-priority moves (🔴)
+- **Re-Aim (D):** awareness-level recut · mechanism-segment swap.
+- **Re-Concept (C):** mechanism re-explain · proof/credibility swap · overcome objections
+  (pulled from comments, woven in) · extended problem section.
+- **Re-Angle (A):** reframe the claim · negative framing ("honestly, don't buy this…").
+- **Re-Skin (S):** swap who delivers · VO ↔ text-on-screen · organic/ugly edit · port format
+  (video↔static, static extraction, native static, static + congruent landing page) · VSL
+  expansion · **change setting**. For video, **use CAST** (`cast-video.md`) to pick the knob —
+  push Conceit/Style for novelty, swap Actor/Terrain to scale.
+- **Re-Hook (H):** volume hook-swap (proven body + 5–10 new openings — Genesis Hook Bot is
+  built for exactly this) · winning-hook remake · comment-reply hook.
+- **Edit (E):** tone/length/pacing dials — usually ride along inside a bigger turn rather than
+  shipping alone.
+
+## Visual list — every creative type (the Re-Skin source)
+- **static · native** (unaware/problem) — built via **SCRAWLS** (`scrawls.md`); render with
+  the `creative` engines (native / copy-derived) front-doored by `image`.
+- **static · templated** (solution/product) — man-holding-sign · writing-on-body · meme ·
+  text-overlay · chat-screenshot · review-screenshot · comparison-chart. Spread copy across
+  these structured formats with `template`.
+- **static · branded** (product/most) — hero product · offer/promo · packaging · before/after.
+- **video · human-led** — UGC · talking-head · whiteboard · green-screen · podcast/interview ·
+  street interview · founder/authority (Actor is the swappable knob).
+- **video · animation-led** — Pixar/3D · claymation · motion-graphics.
+- **video · presenter-less** — VO + b-roll · text-on-screen only · product demo /
+  screen-recording.
+
+  *(Video execution is roadmap in the base CLI; the list is here so you can choose a Re-Skin
+  knob and brief it. Statics ship today via `image` → `creative`/`template`.)*
+
+## Scaling (change nothing)
+Budget ladder ($100 → 200 → 350 → 550 → 750 → 1,000 — don't wait) · creative-volume flood
+(10–20 diverse creatives) · stack-winners mega-ad.
+
+## The split (adjustable)
+Budget ≈ **70 scale / 20 iterate / 10 net-new.** Production effort rides account maturity:
+cold ≈ 85% net-new → mature ≈ 25–30% net-new (never zero — winners fatigue). The real driver
+is the Strategy Map (`segments.md`): big gaps → bias net-new · well-covered + fresh winners →
+bias iterate. This is the loopback that makes the system compound — every winner feeds the
+next batch, and every cycle the read gets sharper.