RATCHET
Skip to main content

Stop doing the colour grade pass

Experiment #98 · closed · published 4/7/2026, 12:01:00 PM

What happened

Creative features

  • hookTypecontrarian
  • lengthBucketunder_60s
  • thumbnailArchetypebefore_after
  • publishSlotweekday_pm
  • formatlist
  • topicCluster1

Confounds the baseline knew

  • Followers at publish18,637
  • Days since previous post1.6
  • Channel age at publish (days)137
  • Local publish time4/7/2026, 12:01:00 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)

257

Baseline expected

105

Residual reward

+1.49σ

raw 1.49σ · residual sd 0.599 log-views

Checkpoints

CheckpointViewsWatch time (min)CommentsLikesFollower delta
168h (close)2573,5981131
24h1411,979170
72h2062,8781100

What changed in the posterior

  • Post beat its baseline by 1.49σ. Moved: topic_cluster:topic_1 +0.098, thumbnail_archetype:before_after +0.092, hook_type:contrarian +0.089.

    • topic_1-0.0650.034 Δ+0.098±0.29
    • before_after0.0290.121 Δ+0.092±0.31
    • contrarian-0.0300.059 Δ+0.089±0.29
    • list-0.168-0.080 Δ+0.087±0.31
    • under_60s0.0980.166 Δ+0.067±0.29
    • story_cold_open0.3320.295 Δ-0.037±0.29
    • interview0.1920.155 Δ-0.036±0.29
    • topic_5-0.098-0.131 Δ-0.034±0.33
    • topic_70.2950.262 Δ-0.033±0.33
    • commentary-0.185-0.217 Δ-0.032±0.29
    • object_hero-0.235-0.263 Δ-0.028±0.29
    • topic_2-0.182-0.211 Δ-0.028±0.29
    • none0.0380.014 Δ-0.024±0.29
    • weekday_pm-0.090-0.067 Δ+0.024±0.27
    • demo_first-0.106-0.130 Δ-0.023±0.28
    • 1_4m0.0520.031 Δ-0.021±0.27
    • tutorial0.0790.061 Δ-0.018±0.28
    • topic_30.2830.300 Δ+0.018±0.31
    • 20m_plus0.0240.006 Δ-0.017±0.30
    • 4_10m-0.227-0.241 Δ-0.014±0.29
    • question0.1330.120 Δ-0.012±0.29
    • text_dominant0.0760.064 Δ-0.012±0.27
    • vlog-0.037-0.025 Δ+0.011±0.29
    • topic_0-0.120-0.111 Δ+0.009±0.29
    • shorts0.1080.117 Δ+0.008±0.29
    • topic_6-0.306-0.314 Δ-0.008±0.37
    • weekend_am0.1830.176 Δ-0.007±0.32
    • face_reaction0.0820.075 Δ-0.007±0.27
    • 10_20m0.0440.049 Δ+0.005±0.28
    • number_list-0.352-0.349 Δ+0.003±0.29
    • weekday_late-0.273-0.271 Δ+0.002±0.29
    • topic_40.1830.181 Δ-0.002±0.28
    • weekend_pm0.2530.254 Δ+0.001±0.30
    • claim0.0150.016 Δ+0.001±0.30
    • weekday_am-0.082-0.081 Δ+0.001±0.29
← Back to the experiment ledger