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The truth about shooting in one take

Experiment #127 · closed · published 5/17/2026, 1:10:00 PM

What happened

Creative features

  • hookTypeclaim
  • lengthBucket10_20m
  • thumbnailArchetypetext_dominant
  • publishSlotweekend_pm
  • formatlist
  • topicCluster6

Confounds the baseline knew

  • Followers at publish21,198
  • Days since previous post0.9
  • Channel age at publish (days)177
  • Local publish time5/17/2026, 1:10:00 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)

113

Baseline expected

147

Residual reward

-0.44σ

raw -0.44σ · residual sd 0.599 log-views

Checkpoints

CheckpointViewsWatch time (min)CommentsLikesFollower delta
168h (close)11335,595060
24h6219,577030
72h9028,476050

What changed in the posterior

  • Post missed its baseline by 0.44σ. Moved: topic_cluster:topic_6 -0.028, format:list -0.023, hook_type:claim -0.019.

    • topic_6-0.505-0.532 Δ-0.028±0.32
    • list0.0390.016 Δ-0.023±0.29
    • claim-0.033-0.052 Δ-0.019±0.28
    • weekend_pm0.3580.345 Δ-0.013±0.28
    • 10_20m0.0640.054 Δ-0.010±0.26
    • text_dominant0.0820.072 Δ-0.009±0.26
    • story_cold_open0.1940.200 Δ+0.007±0.27
    • topic_50.0970.104 Δ+0.007±0.30
    • object_hero-0.371-0.365 Δ+0.006±0.27
    • interview0.0990.105 Δ+0.006±0.27
    • tutorial0.0480.054 Δ+0.006±0.26
    • topic_40.1770.181 Δ+0.004±0.27
    • topic_1-0.055-0.051 Δ+0.004±0.27
    • commentary-0.180-0.177 Δ+0.004±0.28
    • number_list-0.134-0.131 Δ+0.003±0.26
    • weekday_pm-0.084-0.080 Δ+0.003±0.25
    • vlog-0.147-0.144 Δ+0.003±0.27
    • topic_70.2040.207 Δ+0.003±0.29
    • face_reaction0.0730.070 Δ-0.003±0.26
    • shorts0.1530.150 Δ-0.002±0.27
    • weekend_am0.1260.128 Δ+0.002±0.30
    • question0.0870.089 Δ+0.002±0.28
    • topic_30.2810.282 Δ+0.002±0.27
    • 4_10m-0.235-0.233 Δ+0.001±0.27
    • 20m_plus0.0640.066 Δ+0.001±0.28
    • topic_0-0.077-0.076 Δ+0.001±0.27
    • 1_4m0.0160.017 Δ+0.001±0.26
    • demo_first-0.033-0.032 Δ+0.001±0.26
    • topic_2-0.112-0.111 Δ+0.001±0.27
    • under_60s0.1000.100 Δ-0.001±0.27
    • weekday_am-0.109-0.108 Δ+0.001±0.27
    • none0.0820.081 Δ-0.000±0.28
    • contrarian-0.071-0.071 Δ-0.000±0.28
    • weekday_late-0.281-0.281 Δ+0.000±0.29
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