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Nobody saw the home studio rebuild

Experiment #120 · closed · published 5/8/2026, 5:46:00 PM

What happened

Creative features

  • hookTypestory_cold_open
  • lengthBucket10_20m
  • thumbnailArchetypeface_reaction
  • publishSlotweekday_pm
  • formattutorial
  • topicCluster2

Confounds the baseline knew

  • Followers at publish20,606
  • Days since previous post0.3
  • Channel age at publish (days)168
  • Local publish time5/8/2026, 5:46:00 PM

The residual reward

Raw views mostly measure how big the channel already was. The baseline predicts what this channel “should” have earned given the confounds above; the residual is how the post actually landed relative to that prediction — measured in standard deviations.

Observed (168h)

297

Baseline expected

138

Residual reward

+1.28σ

raw 1.28σ · residual sd 0.599 log-views

Checkpoints

CheckpointViewsWatch time (min)CommentsLikesFollower delta
168h (close)29793,5551151
24h16351,455180
72h23874,8441120

What changed in the posterior

  • Post beat its baseline by 1.28σ. Moved: topic_cluster:topic_2 +0.060, hook_type:story_cold_open +0.040, length_bucket:10_20m +0.039.

    • topic_2-0.162-0.102 Δ+0.060±0.27
    • story_cold_open0.1670.207 Δ+0.040±0.27
    • 10_20m0.0330.072 Δ+0.039±0.26
    • tutorial-0.0090.028 Δ+0.037±0.26
    • topic_0-0.057-0.085 Δ-0.028±0.27
    • face_reaction0.0450.073 Δ+0.028±0.26
    • weekday_pm-0.110-0.084 Δ+0.026±0.25
    • weekday_am-0.123-0.145 Δ-0.023±0.27
    • under_60s0.1340.113 Δ-0.021±0.28
    • shorts0.1860.166 Δ-0.020±0.28
    • before_after0.1020.083 Δ-0.019±0.30
    • contrarian-0.029-0.046 Δ-0.017±0.28
    • topic_6-0.493-0.508 Δ-0.015±0.33
    • claim-0.038-0.051 Δ-0.013±0.29
    • weekend_pm0.3870.374 Δ-0.013±0.29
    • commentary-0.157-0.168 Δ-0.011±0.28
    • 20m_plus0.0870.077 Δ-0.010±0.28
    • text_dominant0.1100.100 Δ-0.010±0.26
    • topic_50.1220.112 Δ-0.010±0.30
    • topic_30.2940.286 Δ-0.008±0.28
    • 1_4m-0.027-0.035 Δ-0.008±0.26
    • number_list-0.173-0.180 Δ-0.008±0.27
    • topic_1-0.026-0.034 Δ-0.008±0.27
    • demo_first-0.016-0.023 Δ-0.007±0.27
    • topic_70.1550.161 Δ+0.006±0.30
    • weekday_late-0.280-0.275 Δ+0.005±0.29
    • interview0.1000.097 Δ-0.004±0.27
    • list0.0440.040 Δ-0.004±0.30
    • 4_10m-0.222-0.225 Δ-0.003±0.28
    • vlog-0.158-0.161 Δ-0.003±0.27
    • none0.0870.085 Δ-0.002±0.28
    • weekend_am0.1310.132 Δ+0.001±0.30
    • object_hero-0.338-0.339 Δ-0.001±0.28
    • question0.0950.095 Δ+0.001±0.28
    • topic_40.1740.173 Δ-0.000±0.27
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