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I nearly quit the home studio rebuild

Experiment #153 · closed · published 6/22/2026, 9:47:00 AM

What happened

Creative features

  • hookTypestory_cold_open
  • lengthBucket20m_plus
  • thumbnailArchetypetext_dominant
  • publishSlotweekday_am
  • formatcommentary
  • topicCluster3

Confounds the baseline knew

  • Followers at publish23,787
  • Days since previous post0.8
  • Channel age at publish (days)213
  • Local publish time6/22/2026, 9:47:00 AM

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)

229

Baseline expected

157

Residual reward

+0.63σ

raw 0.63σ · residual sd 0.599 log-views

Checkpoints

CheckpointViewsWatch time (min)CommentsLikesFollower delta
168h (close)229120,2251110
24h12666,124160
72h18396,180190

What changed in the posterior

  • Post beat its baseline by 0.63σ. Moved: topic_cluster:topic_3 +0.016, format:commentary +0.016, length_bucket:20m_plus +0.013.

    • topic_30.2420.258 Δ+0.016±0.26
    • commentary-0.076-0.060 Δ+0.016±0.26
    • 20m_plus-0.118-0.105 Δ+0.013±0.27
    • weekday_am-0.140-0.129 Δ+0.011±0.25
    • story_cold_open0.2590.270 Δ+0.011±0.25
    • text_dominant0.0470.055 Δ+0.008±0.25
    • topic_2-0.147-0.153 Δ-0.006±0.26
    • 4_10m-0.062-0.067 Δ-0.004±0.26
    • weekend_am0.1230.118 Δ-0.004±0.28
    • topic_70.2180.213 Δ-0.004±0.28
    • shorts-0.072-0.076 Δ-0.004±0.26
    • tutorial0.0100.007 Δ-0.004±0.25
    • topic_1-0.100-0.103 Δ-0.003±0.25
    • demo_first-0.086-0.089 Δ-0.003±0.26
    • 10_20m0.0520.049 Δ-0.003±0.25
    • interview0.2150.212 Δ-0.003±0.25
    • weekday_late-0.123-0.125 Δ-0.003±0.28
    • topic_6-0.310-0.313 Δ-0.003±0.29
    • face_reaction0.0800.077 Δ-0.002±0.25
    • number_list-0.094-0.097 Δ-0.002±0.25
    • under_60s0.0680.066 Δ-0.002±0.26
    • vlog-0.061-0.063 Δ-0.002±0.26
    • before_after0.0870.085 Δ-0.002±0.28
    • question0.1230.121 Δ-0.002±0.27
    • 1_4m0.0540.052 Δ-0.002±0.25
    • list-0.024-0.026 Δ-0.002±0.28
    • object_hero-0.288-0.289 Δ-0.002±0.26
    • weekend_pm0.1820.181 Δ-0.001±0.27
    • topic_5-0.046-0.045 Δ+0.001±0.29
    • weekday_pm-0.049-0.050 Δ-0.001±0.24
    • claim-0.155-0.156 Δ-0.001±0.25
    • topic_40.1980.199 Δ+0.001±0.26
    • contrarian-0.053-0.054 Δ-0.001±0.26
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