Transcription
Yap style videos are hitting millions of views on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, but what if you didn't have to film them yourself? In this video, we're going to use Claude Code to generate yap style videos for you using your AI clone. It's going to research your topic, write the script, and create your AI avatar using HeyGen.
And if we haven't met yet, my name is Duncan Rogoff. I'm a former art director for brands like Apple, PlayStation, and Nissan, and I now run one of the top communities for learning Claude Code and building income. If you want to follow along, we're going to build everything step by step, so focus in, close all your open tabs, and let's build. If you want to get access to the skill we build today, just check the link in the description.
So, the first thing I'm going to do is I'm just going to come into the Claude desktop app and make sure we're inside of Claude Code. Next, all you need to do is create a brand new folder for us to work in, so I'll just put one on my desktop and I'll just call this yap cuz it doesn't really matter, and we'll open this up. I'm also going to use the model Opus 4.8 for this because it's a more complex task that requires a little bit more power, but you might be able to get away with Sonnet, but let's stick with Opus.
So, the first thing we need to do is to figure out like what actually makes a good yap style video, and so we will just have Claude do the research for us. I need to figure out what makes a good yap style short-form video for Instagram Reels. I need to figure out what format the script should take, what hooks are popular, what kind of topics or content resonate, and really what goes viral. Please do some deep research for me.
So, today we're just going to be building this skill from the ground up, and the beauty of working with a system like Claude Code is there's no use waiting around while we could be doing some other things. So, what we can do is we can already start building out our AI avatar while Claude does our research. And so, in order to do this, we want to come over to a site called HeyGen, and while they are the sponsor of this video, they are the industry standard for AI avatars or digital clones. The product is super easy to use, the results are insane, and they connect super easily with Claude Code.
So, once you create your account, all you you to do is come into avatar. So, I already have an avatar that I've been working from, but if you want to start from scratch, just come up to the top here and click new avatar. You can create a virtual character just by uploading an image or designing with AI, or you can clone a real person by recording your webcam or uploading a video clip you have.
So, first thing I'm going to do is I'm just going to take a selfie. So, I just took this photo of myself and it's good enough for today. But, if you wanted to make it better, you could really quickly come into something like Google AI Studio. You could upload the photo of yourself. Make sure you're using Nano Banana 2, and you could say something like, "Please make this look like I'm a professional in a YouTube studio." And then, I'm just going to go ahead and change the aspect ratio to 9 by 16, which is vertical, which is perfect for shorts, and the resolution, let's set this up high to make sure we have good quality images.
So, this is the image that we created. I think it's just okay, honestly, but with a little bit more work on the prompting, I think you could get what you wanted. I'm going to use the original image cuz I actually kind of liked it. So, I'm going to come back into my avatar here. Go ahead and click in and I'm just going to upload a look. HeyGen actually prefers a JPEG or a PNG, so I'm just going to open this up in preview. Come over here, file, go to export. Save this as a JPEG in my downloads folder. The name doesn't really matter. Click upload. Upload my photo now and we have this already to go. I'm just going to go ahead and click create look.
And to make sure that we are all ready to go, what we want to do is you want to connect the HeyGen MCP up to Cloud Code. So, you can just come over to developers.heygen.com, click into the MCP key tab, and what you want to do is you just want to copy this link right here. So, I'm going to click copy, come back into Cloud Code while this is doing the research for us. Click the plus down at the bottom here. You can go into connectors and manage connectors. And then, at the top, click the plus one more time. Add a custom connector and I'm just going to name this HeyGen. Paste in the URL here and click add.
You can see this is all ready to go and And just says you're not connected to HeyGen yet. All you have to do is click connect when you're logged into your account. It's going to just ask you to give Claude code access to HeyGen. I'm going to click yes, go ahead, and now Claude code is all connected to HeyGen and we are ready to use Claude to create our digital twin.
So, you can see that we have HeyGen over here. So, these are all the permissions that HeyGen has access to and I'm just going to switch these to always allow so I don't need to approve everything every time. And I'm just going to do the same down here. We are all good to go. And so, the last thing to check to make sure that you're a good is you just click the plus. If you come into connectors and you can see that we have HeyGen right here toggled on, that means we're all connected.
And so, this is why Claude code is so powerful. You can see right here that deep research is going and it's actually spawned 33 different agents for us to research the app style videos. So, we can open this up and we can see all of the different agents that are running, all of the searches that it's performing. You can also see the token usage and how long things are taking. So, this just finished. It took about 10 minutes and it did a lot of research for us. It went through 26 sources and organized everything for me around the four questions that I asked. Here's what it discovered about writing viral hooks. Here's how it thinks we should pick topics to create content that resonates. So, engineer for the action you want, not for likes. So, engineer something for savable content or shareable content or story time or like a rant, right? Here's some of the virality mechanics and here's actually a template that we can use to base everything on. So, this is a very good start.
So, what do we need to do from here? Well, first, I want to save this research. We did a lot of work, we spent a bunch of tokens, we might as well save it so if we ever need it for anything else, we have it. The first thing I want to do is I want you to just save this research in our folder so that I have it for later. While it's doing that, the next thing we want to do is you want to start thinking about creating the skill. A skill is basically just a reusable set of instructions that Claude code can follow to get consistent results every single time. So, if we're going to be creating a lot of these app style videos, we want to make sure we can do it from a single command. And what's cool is we already have all of the pieces that we need. We understand what makes a strong hook. We understand the format that works for a yap style video. We understand the script, and we have our HeyGen avatar all ready to go.
So, this is cool. It just went ahead and saved this research for us. If we ever need to reference it later, we have it. So, let's ask it to build the skill for us. Based off of all of this research, we need to create a skill for yap style videos. Basically, the skill needs to research some topics that are trending in my niche right now. It needs to draft a yap style script including a viral hook and the proven format that works. This needs to be engineered for engagement and virality, and then it actually needs to use HeyGen to create an avatar speaking that script. Here is my HeyGen avatar ID and the voice ID.
So, there are two pieces to your HeyGen avatar. One is the video and one is the voice. So, the video ID you can get inside of your avatar. You can just click these dots. You can say copy the avatar look ID. I'll come back into Claude code, and I'll just say, "HeyGen avatar ID." And I will paste that in. And then I will say, "HeyGen voice ID." And you can come into here, and if you see on the left, we have voices. And you can choose from this whole list of voices. These are voices that I've generated. You have the HeyGen library, which literally has hundreds of voices for you to choose from. You can just listen to a couple of these and pick the one that you want. If you want to clone your own voice, so it sounds like you, just click clone your voice at the top. You can actually record audio here directly into HeyGen, or if you have an audio file ready to go, maybe a clip that you've already processed to sound extra good, you can just upload that file here. I already have my own voice that I've cloned. It's this professional one here. I literally fed it 2 hours of me talking. You can come in here, click get voice ID, come back into Claude, and I'm just going to paste that in as well.
So, this is why we connected to HeyGen earlier to make sure that Claude code had access to the API to understand how to actually make our avatar do things. Says it has everything it needs, it's building the app scale for us as we speak. So, this really only took a couple of minutes and it built a whole skill for us.
So, the first thing it's going to do, it's going to read information about my ICP, my offer, and my brand voice. This system actually knew to do this. I didn't instruct it. It's okay if you don't have the stuff, Claude will figure it out. So, it's going to read from the hook swipe file that I have cuz I've been saving viral hooks over these past couple of weeks so we can create higher quality content. So, you could do something similar. Go to Instagram, find hooks that are working, write them down somewhere, and give it to Claude. The next thing it's going to do, it's going to research any topics, it's going to scrape the web across my niche to figure out what people are talking about. It's going to pick one single topic scored on DM shareability, a contrarian angle, and the pain my ICP is feeling. If I name a specific topic directly, it's going to not do any research, it's just going to use that topic. So, if something is trending like Anthropic just shut down Fable, I can just tell it to make a video about that. Next, it's going to draft the script for us. It's going to apply the verified format from the research, so we know this works. And then it's going to render the avatar via HeyGen. It's going to use my avatar and voice IDs that I gave it. It's going to be 9 by 16, so vertical format, great for shorts, and it's actually even going to burn in the captions for us. It's going to set the speed to 1.1, so we talk a little bit faster, so it has a little bit more energy. And then once it's done, it's going to return the video URL and it's going to log everything for us.
It's just asking, "Do I want to do a live test run now?" Of course. So, I will just say yes.
So, the system already did some research for me and wrote a script. And I actually think this is kind of funny and worth talking about. So, basically there's a strong convergence all the reels are saying right now, "If your 2026 strategy is AI doing all the heavy lifting, it won't work." AI makes average branding easier, but exceptional branding harder. And I actually do think there is some truth to this. I do think in a world of AI slop and where people are increasingly putting out AI content on the internet, there is increasingly more room for people with an authentic presence and voice to stand out. That being said, I've been creating a lot of AI content myself, and people are still engaging with it. They're still sharing, they're still liking, they're still commenting, they're still receiving lead magnets. So, it really all depends on who your audience is and the value of the content that you're creating.
So, this is the script that it wrote. Everyone's using AI to pump out more content. That's exactly why they're invisible. Here's what nobody's saying. So, that's a really strong opening hook, and I think this is the core line right here. AI isn't your content, it's your leverage. Use it to amplify a real voice, not replace one. So, if we come back up here, I think that's why some of these things like training Claude with your brand voice or your personal story or your own philosophy or your beliefs is actually really impactful. Because now you don't just have an AI avatar that sounds and thinks like everyone else, you have one that's actually true to you and based off of your personal experience and beliefs. So, stop asking AI to write for you, start asking what you'd say if you stopped copying everyone.
So, it sent the script over to HeyGen. HeyGen is processing the video, and we're just waiting to hear back. So, here's the video the system created. If you want to start using HeyGen today, just check the link in the description. If you want to get access to the skill already built for you, join the community.
Everyone's using AI to pump out more content. That's exactly why they're invisible. Here's what nobody's saying. The feed is drowning in AI spam. So, the algorithm stopped rewarding volume and started rewarding the one thing AI can't fake, you, your real opinion, the story only you have lived. When you use AI to post more, you blend in. When you use it to say something true faster, you stand out.