Grandparent Channel Topic Mining for YouTube
Trace a competitor to the older source it borrowed from, then mine that source for proven topics no current channel has covered.
Before & after
Same prompt, same agent — the only difference is the skill.
Finding untapped topics is tough because your competitor has probably already covered a lot of ground. You could look at what they're posting and identify gaps, or you could search for related content from other creators in your space to see what's out there. Sometimes the best ideas come from looking at adjacent niches or older content that's still getting views. You might also try reverse-engineering their audience—see what comments they're getting and what people ask for. What's your specific niche, and which competitor are you most concerned about?
GRANDPARENT CHANNEL ANALYSIS YOUR COMPETITOR: Court Cases Daily (850K subs) GRANDPARENT SOURCE IDENTIFIED: A&E (network archives, 8,000+ episodes) WHY THIS WORKS Court Cases Daily copied A&E's format and topic pillars. But A&E has 30+ years of high-retention case archives untouched by any current competitor. Their audience stays engaged because the source material is proven. TOP UNCOVERED A&E TOPICS (ranked by views) 1. JonBenet Ramsey grand jury coverage (estimated 850K views on A&E; 0 current competitors) 2. Menendez sentencing 1996 deep dive (750K estimated; your competitor covered trial, not sentencing) 3. Dahmer family interviews (1.2M estimated; timely, Dahmer docuseries attention spike Nov 2024) 4. Roe v. Wade original arguments audio (920K estimated; still trending) 5. West Memphis Three exonerations (680K; deeply researched, underutilized) FILTER APPLIED → Removed: Topics covered by any current competitor (21 topics filtered out) → Removed: Topics under 500K estimated views (low-ROI) → Kept: Topics with 6+ months of search momentum PRIORITY QUEUE (30 days) Week 1: JonBenet Ramsey; Week 2: Menendez; Week 3: Dahmer; Week 4: Roe v. Wade ESTIMATED VIEWS: 3.1M over 4 weeks if you execute with A&E's audio/archive depth.
About this skill
Every case, story, or topic you think of is already on your competitor's channel, and copying their hits means you show up third to something viewers have already seen twice. The better well is upstream: the older channel, docuseries, or podcast your competitor borrowed from. This skill finds that source from real evidence, ranks its archive by how much each video beat its own channel's normal, and keeps only topics nobody in your niche has done well.
What it does
- Scores possible "grandparent" sources on topic overlap, which came first, format echoes, and direct references, so the lineage rests on evidence and not a hunch
- Looks past YouTube to TV series, podcasts, and archives, and flags copyright risk when the source is footage you can't reuse
- Ranks the source archive by outlier score (views compared with the channel's median for that period), not raw views, and skips the top hits everyone has already copied
- Checks coverage by searching several name variants per topic and labels each one Untouched, Stale, Weak, or Taken, with who covered it and when
- Adds trend hooks (anniversaries, appeals, new adaptations) and estimates views as a multiple of your channel's median
- Removes topics that won't work for you: thin source material, ad-unfriendly content, or legal risk around living private people
What you get
A lineage map with evidence scores, then a prioritized topic queue. Each topic comes with its outlier strength, coverage tier, trend hook, estimated view range, and a fresh angle. You also get a count of what was cut and why.
Best for
Faceless YouTube operators, script and research leads at content agencies, and channel managers in documentary-style niches (true crime, history, mysteries, business stories) who are running out of ideas.
SKILL.md preview
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name: grandparent-channel-topic-mining
description: Finds proven, uncovered YouTube video topics. It traces a competitor channel back to the older source it borrowed its format and topics from (another channel, a TV docuseries, a podcast), ranks that source's archive by age-normalized outlier performance, and filters out anything current competitors have already made well. Use when the user says "I'm running out of video ideas", "my competitor beats me to every topic", "where does this channel get its ideas", "find topics nobody in my niche has covered", "mine my competitor's source channel", "every topic I think of is already done", "build me a topic queue for my faceless channel".
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