Skip to main content
Craft is the how pillar: some videos win because of how they are made, whatever their topic and whoever made them. Wholana reads every successful video and files it under five vocabularies. You can browse each one, learn the pattern, then pull every video in the corpus that uses it. Open Craft in the Library section of the sidebar to reach any of the five.

​
The five vocabularies

Hook archetypes

How a video stops the scroll in its first seconds. 14 families, 50 archetypes.

Narrative structures

The shape the story takes so people watch to the end. 17 families, 74 structures.

Stake types

What is on the line for the person in the video. 12 families, 55 stakes.

Shareability drivers

Why a viewer passes the video on or saves it. 8 families, 37 drivers.

Video formats

The form the video takes, from talking-head to slideshow. 8 families, 27 formats.
The five are independent. One video carries one label from each, so a talking-head video can open with a curiosity gap, run a problem-to-solution structure, put money on the line, and get shared as a warning.

​
How each vocabulary is organised

Every vocabulary is two levels deep:
  • A family groups related patterns, for example Confrontation in hook archetypes.
  • An item is one specific named pattern inside it, for example Callout: “direct criticism aimed at a person, group, brand, or practice.”
The index page lists the families as cards with their items inside. Rest your cursor on any item to preview its top videos. Click through for the item’s own page, with its description and up to 24 real examples.

​
Reading the signals

Each item on an index page carries up to three small numbers: Sort the page by Most videos, Highest lift, Heating up, or A–Z. Searching or picking a non-default sort flips the page into a flat ranked list, so Highest lift gives you a straight leaderboard of the patterns that punch above their weight.

​
Filtering the corpus by craft

Every family page and item page has a See all in Explore link. It opens the Explore feed filtered to videos that use that pattern. A family link includes every item inside it. You can also build the same thing by hand: press Filter on the feed and pick Hook archetype, Narrative structure, Stake type, Shareability driver, or Video format. Under More craft there are further decoded filters: Sentiment, Specificity, Side hook, Payoff timing, Re-engagement, Perceived stakes, Pain avoidance, CTA, and Comment bait.
The assistant can combine craft filters with a topic in one sentence:
Assistant prompt

​
Where craft shows up elsewhere

  • On a video’s page, the decoded breakdown shows which pattern the video used on each of the five axes, with a short note on how to use it and a link to see who runs that pattern best.
  • On a creator’s page, Craft Signature summarises the patterns that creator returns to.
  • On the Dashboard, the panel Where your videos win and lose shows your pass rate across the five engine systems, so you can see which one to fix next.
The five craft vocabularies describe someone else’s video. The five engine systems on the Dashboard (Stop-scroll, Retention, Stakes & Value, Engagement, Metadata) grade your own posted video. They line up roughly one to one, but they are separate things.
Craft labels are produced by Wholana’s automated reading of the corpus, on videos with at least 1,000 likes. The vocabulary is an evolving proposal, not a fixed standard, and individual labels can be wrong.

Subjects

The what pillar: the topic tree behind the corpus.

Creators

The who pillar, including each creator’s Craft Signature.