RATCHET
Skip to main content

Everyone is wrong about the home studio rebuild

Experiment #172 · closed · published 7/19/2026, 2:52:00 PM

What happened

Creative features

  • hookTypecontrarian
  • lengthBucketunder_60s
  • thumbnailArchetypenone
  • publishSlotweekend_pm
  • formatvlog
  • topicCluster0

Confounds the baseline knew

  • Followers at publish25,961
  • Days since previous post0.9
  • Channel age at publish (days)240
  • Local publish time7/19/2026, 2:52:00 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)

433

Baseline expected

177

Residual reward

+1.50σ

raw 1.50σ · residual sd 0.599 log-views

Checkpoints

CheckpointViewsWatch time (min)CommentsLikesFollower delta
168h (close)4336,0622221
24h2383,3341120
72h3464,8501171

What changed in the posterior

  • Post beat its baseline by 1.50σ. Moved: topic_cluster:topic_0 +0.039, length_bucket:under_60s +0.035, format:vlog +0.035.

    • topic_0-0.053-0.014 Δ+0.039±0.25
    • under_60s0.0750.110 Δ+0.035±0.25
    • vlog-0.089-0.054 Δ+0.035±0.25
    • weekend_pm0.1210.152 Δ+0.031±0.26
    • contrarian-0.032-0.002 Δ+0.031±0.25
    • none0.0690.090 Δ+0.021±0.26
    • weekday_pm-0.053-0.066 Δ-0.013±0.24
    • question0.1690.156 Δ-0.012±0.26
    • 4_10m-0.089-0.102 Δ-0.012±0.25
    • tutorial0.0390.029 Δ-0.010±0.24
    • story_cold_open0.1970.187 Δ-0.010±0.25
    • topic_70.1820.172 Δ-0.009±0.26
    • 10_20m0.0590.049 Δ-0.009±0.25
    • commentary-0.023-0.031 Δ-0.007±0.26
    • topic_30.2530.246 Δ-0.007±0.25
    • face_reaction0.0500.043 Δ-0.007±0.24
    • interview0.1560.149 Δ-0.007±0.24
    • before_after0.0820.088 Δ+0.006±0.27
    • object_hero-0.273-0.279 Δ-0.006±0.26
    • 1_4m0.0600.054 Δ-0.006±0.25
    • weekday_late-0.124-0.129 Δ-0.005±0.27
    • topic_40.1700.164 Δ-0.005±0.25
    • topic_5-0.007-0.011 Δ-0.004±0.26
    • 20m_plus-0.119-0.115 Δ+0.004±0.26
    • claim-0.171-0.168 Δ+0.004±0.25
    • text_dominant0.0590.056 Δ-0.003±0.25
    • shorts-0.079-0.076 Δ+0.002±0.26
    • weekend_am0.1460.144 Δ-0.002±0.28
    • list-0.018-0.020 Δ-0.001±0.27
    • topic_1-0.079-0.080 Δ-0.001±0.25
    • demo_first-0.047-0.048 Δ-0.001±0.25
    • number_list-0.129-0.128 Δ+0.001±0.25
    • topic_2-0.181-0.181 Δ-0.000±0.26
    • topic_6-0.299-0.299 Δ-0.000±0.27
    • weekday_am-0.105-0.104 Δ+0.000±0.25
← Back to the experiment ledger