Tiktok Research

# TikTok Research Skill

Use this skill for organic TikTok platform research: keyword and hashtag
sampling, competitor or creator sampling, profile enrichment, comments, trend
and benchmark discovery, and dataset summaries.

Apply shared rulebook and user-guidance rules from `postplus-shared`.

## Do Not Use When

- The user wants paid ad intelligence. Route to `tiktok-ad-research`.
- The user has already selected sounds and needs local downloads or audio
  extraction. Route to `tiktok-music-archive-downloader`.
- The user asks for external articles, policy, or news rather than TikTok
  platform data.
- The request requires unsupported shop creator analytics.

## Cost Discipline

Keep the first pass bounded:

- 3-5 strongest queries or 2-4 seed hashtags.
- 5-12 results per hashtag or query.
- Treat `limit` as the target shortlist or candidate goal, not as a per-query
  scrape size.
- Do not collect comments, related videos, downloads, subtitles, or follower
  expansion in the first pass unless the current step truly needs them.
- Run serially; inspect and refine before expanding.

## Collection Key Routing

Use released hosted collection keys only with

- `tiktok-videos`: keyword, hashtag, profile URL, music URL, direct video, and
  content-first creator discovery; local input shape `tiktok-scraper`.
- `tiktok-users`: keyword account-search supplement; local input shape
  `tiktok-user-search-scraper`.
- `tiktok-profiles`: profile enrichment from known handles; local input shape
  `tiktok-profile-scraper`.
- `tiktok-related-videos`: graph expansion from shortlisted video URLs.
- `tiktok-comments`: focused comment collection.

`tiktok-scraper`, `tiktok-user-search-scraper`,
`tiktok-profile-scraper`, and `tiktok-comments-scraper` are not hosted
collection keys. Do not pass them to the collection runner.

## Creator Discovery Rule

For creator discovery with follower-band, recent-activity, local-language,
geo-fit, or content-fit constraints, do not default to plain account search.

Prefer:

1. collect matched videos with `tiktok-videos`,
2. extract authors from `.items[].authorUsername`,
3. expand around strong seed videos if recall is weak,
4. enrich profiles with `tiktok-profiles`,
5. rank with profile plus content evidence.

Use `tiktok-users` only as an account-search supplement unless the user
explicitly asks for account-search recall.

## Default Workflow

1. Choose the route first: content-first, handle-first, graph-first, or mixed.
2. Keep the first hosted collection narrow when the brief is simple.
3. Put the compiled input under a `schemaVersion: 1` hosted envelope before
   running `postplus research collect --skill tiktok-research`.
4. Enrich profiles only after the content or account dataset exists.
5. Expand around strong seed videos only after a promising shortlist exists.
6. Summarize source surface, source query, strongest openings, repeated
   formats, creators, hashtags, and missing evidence.

Keep raw datasets and intermediate files under `.postplus/`; keep final
reports or shortlist exports outside `.postplus/` when the user needs them.

## Failure Modes

- Do not answer TikTok collection tasks with generic web search.
- Do not use paid ad data as organic creator or content evidence.
- Do not route profile enrichment through unpublished keys or implementation
  names.
- Do not pass bare local input JSON to hosted collection commands.
- Stop on missing auth, unavailable PostPlus Cloud service, stable network
  failure, malformed collection output, or unsupported collection keys.

## Handoff

- Creator shortlist or public contact signals -> `creator-outreach`.
- Instagram creator discovery -> `instagram-creator-discovery`.
- Paid ad hooks or objectives -> `tiktok-ad-research`.
- Local benchmark video f