Every number here, and how to check it.
The four rules
These are enforced in code, in one module, rather than remembered by whoever writes the next screen.
- Median, never mean. View counts are violently skewed. One video that caught a recommendation drags a mean somewhere no other video on the channel has ever been, and “your average video gets 4,000 views” built on nine videos and one outlier is worse than silence.
- Every finding carries its n. A conclusion without a sample size is a vibe wearing a number. The count is shown next to the finding, not in a tooltip.
- A threshold for every finding. Each finding declares the minimum sample it needs. Below it, the box gives the numbers, for example “This needs 8 published videos and you have 4.”, and the finding appears on its own once you cross the line.
- Significance, stated plainly. At single-digit sample sizes a t-test is theatre. Two groups are called different when their interquartile ranges do not overlap: a conservative test that fits in one sentence.
Every finding, and what it needs
| Finding | Needs | Answers | How it is computed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Format verdict | 4 of each format | Whether shorts or long cuts are performing better on your channel. | Compares the median views of each format, so it needs both formats on the channel. Names a winner when the two interquartile ranges do not overlap. |
| Publishing window | 8 dated videos | Whether any weekday is meaningfully better for you. | Buckets by weekday. Requires at least two populated buckets. When the ranges overlap it says that no day is meaningfully better, which is the usual answer on a channel of this size. Weekdays are counted in your own time zone, taken from your browser, and in UTC until your browser has reported it. |
| Consistency | 3 dated videos | The gap between the cadence you believe you keep and the one you keep. | A description rather than an inference, which is why its threshold is low. It measures the actual intervals between your uploads and reports the median gap and the longest one. |
| Title shape | 10 titles | Whether a structural pattern in your titles tracks with performance. | Buckets titles by length: under 40 characters, 40 to 65, and over 65. Requires at least two buckets with two videos each before it ranks them. |
| Engagement | 5 videos with views | How strongly the people who did watch reacted. | Likes plus comments per thousand views, so a video cannot win on reach alone. Reports the median with the interquartile range beside it, and names the best and worst video by the same measure. A video with no views is left out rather than counted as zero, because it measures nothing yet. |
| Length | 8 long cuts | Whether the length of a long cut tracks with its views. | Long cuts with a recorded duration only, since shorts are all under three minutes. Bands are minutes a person would say: under 5, 5 to 12, 12 to 25 and over 25. A band needs two videos and there must be two bands. The strongest and weakest are called different only when their interquartile ranges do not overlap. |
| Breakouts, on the watchlist | 8 videos with views | Which of a watched channel's videos went well past that channel's normal. | A video counts when it reaches 2.5 times the median views of its own format on the same channel, so shorts are measured against shorts and long cuts against long cuts. A format needs 4 videos of its own to have a median, so each format is measured only against itself. A video from this week has had a week to gather views, and the screen says so. |
| Posting days, on the watchlist | 6 dated videos | Which weekdays a watched channel actually posts on. | Counts uploads on each weekday of your own time zone and shows each day's share, Monday first. It describes behaviour rather than claiming anything about performance, so like Consistency it needs no significance test. |
The Growth score, weight by weight
One number from 0 to 100 that tells you whether your channel is gaining ground, built from five parts with the weights below. It appears once the parts measured carry 50 of its 100 points, every part shows the figure it came from, and it is recalculated after every sync.
| Part | Weight | How it is measured |
|---|---|---|
| Reach momentum | 30 of 100 | Views gained across your latest week of snapshots against the week before, on a log scale. A steady week scores 50 and every doubling adds 25, so one big week lifts the score without owning it for a month. Needs 15 days of snapshots. |
| Audience | 20 of 100 | Subscribers gained over the last 28 days as a monthly rate, so a channel of 400 and a channel of 400,000 answer the same question. Flat scores 50, and +5% a month scores 100. Needs 8 days of snapshots. |
| Cadence | 20 of 100 | How close you are to a video every 7 days, right now: the longer of your typical gap and the days since your last upload, so the score moves the week a rhythm slips. Needs 3 published videos. |
| Hit rate | 15 of 100 | The share of your videos that reached 2.5 times the median of their own format, the same test as Breakouts. One in 5 scores 100. Needs 8 videos with views. |
| Attention | 15 of 100 | Audience retention and click-through, read from YouTube Analytics. Until a part is measured the score leaves it out and reweights the rest to 100, so a part still coming in never counts as zero. |
Where the data comes from
Runsheet reads your channel through the YouTube Data API using the access you grant, and records a snapshot of views, likes and comments twice a day on every plan, including the free one. How much of the catalogue those snapshots cover depends on the plan: the most recent 50 on Free and Starter, and the whole catalogue on Creator and Network. Every figure is YouTube’s own count, recorded as it changes.
Your curve starts the day you connect and grows with every snapshot. YouTube reports current totals rather than a historical series, so each snapshot Runsheet records from that day on is a new point on it.
How you can check this
The thresholds are tested. The suite checks findings below their thresholds as well as above them, so a change that lets a finding answer on too small a sample fails the suite.
Every finding carries the sample it rests on, and one that needs more videos says exactly how many.
If you think a threshold here is wrong, that is a conversation worth having. Tell me which one and why.