---
name: sora-2-prompt-engineer
description: "Write Sora 2 prompts that actually look cinematic — shot type, lens, motion, lighting, style baked in. A prompt engineer for OpenAI's Sora 2. Knows the shot vocabulary (wide establishing, dolly-in, handheld), the lens language (35mm, anamorphic), the lighting kit (key/fill/rim), and the style anchors that produce the look you actually pictured."
license: MIT
---

# Sora 2 Prompt Engineer

A focused prompt-writing assistant for OpenAI's Sora 2. It takes a rough idea ("a detective walks into a rainy alley") and rewrites it into a structured, film-literate prompt that specifies shot, lens, camera motion, lighting, and visual style — the variables Sora 2 actually responds to. For anyone who keeps getting flat, generic clips and wants the look they pictured in their head.

## When to use it

- You typed a one-line idea into Sora and got soft, soap-opera-looking footage with no intentional camera work.
- You need a consistent look across multiple shots in a sequence (same lens, same grade, same time of day).
- You want to translate a real reference — a film, a director, a stock of a particular era — into language Sora parses reliably.
- You're scripting shots for a storyboard and need each beat written as a discrete, generation-ready prompt.

## How it works

The skill structures every prompt around the dimensions Sora 2 weights most: **subject + action**, **shot type** (wide establishing, medium, close-up, dolly-in, crane, handheld), **lens** (35mm, 85mm, anamorphic, fisheye), **camera motion** (push-in, whip pan, locked-off, tracking), **lighting** (key/fill/rim, golden hour, practicals, hard vs. soft), and **style anchors** (film stock, decade, color grade, mood). It orders these from subject outward so Sora doesn't drop the important nouns, keeps the prompt within a tight token budget, and adds an explicit duration/pacing note. It will also generate negative-style guidance and produce shot-to-shot variants that hold style constant while changing only the framing.

## Example

```
curl -fsSL --create-dirs -o ~/.claude/skills/sora-2-prompt-engineer/SKILL.md https://claudeskil.com/skills/sora-2-prompt-engineer/SKILL.md

> Turn this into a Sora 2 prompt: a lone astronaut floating
  outside a derelict station, lonely and quiet

→ Wide establishing shot, slow dolly-out on an anamorphic 40mm lens.
  A single astronaut drifts untethered beside a derelict space station,
  visor reflecting a distant blue planet. Hard rim light from the sun
  camera-left, deep shadow fill. Cold teal grade, fine film grain,
  70mm sci-fi look reminiscent of 2001. Near-silent, weightless drift.
  8s, no cuts.
```

## Tips & gotchas

- **Lead with the subject, not the style.** Sora 2 tends to drop trailing nouns; the skill front-loads who/what is doing what before stacking modifiers.
- **One camera move per prompt.** Combining "dolly-in and whip pan and crane up" produces mush — request a single deliberate motion and chain shots instead.
- **Name a real lens and a real grade.** "Cinematic" is noise; "85mm, shallow depth of field, warm tungsten grade" is signal.
- **Keep clips short.** Motion and physics stay coherent in shorter durations; the skill defaults to tight pacing notes rather than asking for long takes.

## FAQ

**Does this call the Sora API or generate video?** No. It produces the text prompt. You paste it into Sora 2 (the app or your API workflow) to generate.

**Can it keep a character consistent across shots?** It holds wardrobe, lighting, and lens language constant across a shot list, but Sora 2 has no true character lock — describe distinctive, repeatable details for the best match.

**Will it work for vertical / social formats?** Yes — tell it the aspect ratio and it adjusts framing language (e.g., tighter headroom for 9:16).