Opus Clip Can’t Copy My Personality

Hey honeys and hustlers,

I build tools for creators, which means I’m supposed to be the person who claps enthusiastically when software promises to “do the marketing for you.” And to be clear: I love systems. I love when the boring part gets smoothed out so your brain can stay focused on the part that brings you joy. That’s why I made Postglow and Honeyblocks—tools that help you turn the work you’re already doing into repeatable social images and newsletter sections without turning you into a full-time graphic designer with a minor in Canva. They’re not magic. They’re more like… a well-labeled drawer. You still own the stuff. You can just find it faster.

So people understandably ask me: if you’re into repeatability, why don’t you use tools like Opus Clip or Substack’s auto-generated clips to crank out short-form video? Well, I’ve tried them, and other tools like them to generate LinkedIn carousels, and they all have the same problem. Most auto-clip tools aren’t really selling you efficiency. They’re selling you a style. A very specific few styles, actually. The same caption styles as the “big” names. The same on-screen typography. The same AI-selected “highlight” beats. The same glossy, vaguely motivational clip that makes a person sound like they’re auditioning for a TED Talk sponsored by an energy drink.

And sure, you can tweak the fonts and colors. People always say that like it’s a small detail, like adding seasoning after the food is already cooked. But fonts and colors are not sprinkles. They’re recognition. They’re the visual equivalent of a voice—one that gets louder every time you repeat it. Big creators have recognizable brands because they’ve been repeating their own visual choices for a long time. They built a pattern that audiences recognize with the sound off while scrolling. Then a bunch of software came along and tried to bottle that pattern, but only the most generic, most exportable part of it. The result is a machine that helps smaller creators move faster… into sameness.

And that sameness is especially brutal in short-form video, where the feed already feels like a nonstop stream of talking-head reels. You don’t need more clips. You need more you. More of the specific texture of how you talk, how you pause, what you believe is funny, what you believe is true, and what you’re willing to repeat until it becomes yours.

The same issue shows up in AI-generated carousels too. Truthfully, I tried to build something in that world, and what I kept running into was the lack of context. AI can generate a graphic image, yes. It can’t, however, reliably generate the point. It doesn’t know your audience’s inside jokes, your history, your receipts, your tone, or the tiny decisions that make something scroll-stopping instead of scroll-by.

A lot of these tools promise: “We’ll find the story for you.” That’s exactly what makes me allergic to them. Your story is not a feature. Why you made something and why it matters is something AI can’t really comprehend, because it doesn’t have lived experience. It’s only barely good at identifying what the story is about. When I think about creator tools that are actually worth paying for, I think about the ones that amplify the work you already did, the taste you already earned, and the voice you’re already building. Tools that don’t replace the human part—they just make it easier to publish the human part consistently.

That’s the difference between automation that helps and automation that homogenizes. One gives you leverage. The other gives you a costume. Do I want creators to have an easier long-form-to-short-form workflow? Absolutely. I want that so badly I keep circling back to my products to make small but hopefully mighty updates.

Until these tools can help you sound more like yourself—not like the internet’s default settings of what performs well—I’d rather do it a little slower and keep my weird. And honestly, I designed it so that it’s really not much slower at all, and the results are better (if I’m being completely and totally unbiased).

P.S. I want to submit these products to the beehiiv experts catalog. I need 4-5 volunteers to use the products (for free) in exchange for leaving a written review, and preferably a video review of you using the tools. You don’t have to be a beehiiv user for Postglow; you can publish your articles or podcast wherever you’d like. However, Honeyblocks is currently exclusively for beehiiv users, unless some of you respond that you’d like something similar for your email host provider. Reply to this email or leave a comment to get a link!