Channel formula

Channel Formula

• Every channel that works has an unwritten contract with its audience: a specific promise the winners keep and the flops break. This skill makes the contract written.
• Generic storytelling craft is necessary but not sufficient — a technically perfect story that breaks the channel's promise still dies. Audience expectation beats craft.
• The output is a reusable channel profile: formula, title pattern, packaging rules, and retention benchmarks, extracted from the channel's own data — never from assumptions about the niche.
• Built on the six levers — see storytelling-hooks. Recap: 1. Curiosity gap · 2. Emotional mirror · 3. Conflict engine · 4. Relatability · 5. Pattern + surprise · 6. Three-act.

When to Use

• A channel has some winners and some flops and nobody can articulate why.
• Before scripting for an established channel — check the premise against the formula first.
• After a flop, alongside retention-audit (audit finds where it died; this skill finds what promise was broken).
• Any platform, any niche: crime stories, cricket, tech reviews, cozy content, finance, faith, vlogs.

Intake (the evidence)

• 3–5 top videos: title, thumbnail (screenshot fine), views/velocity, and if available retention at 0:30.
• 1–3 flops from the same format — flops are as informative as winners; the formula lives in the difference.
• Channel's audience in one sentence, and what viewers do with the content (background listening? active watching? saving?).
• Never derive a formula from one video or from niche stereotypes — real data only. Too few videos? Say so and mark the profile "provisional".

Extraction Workflow

1. Line up winners' titles side by side. Find the shared skeleton: what kind of threat/promise/subject repeats? What resolution do they all point to? Write the pattern as a fill-in: [recurring setup]... [recurring promise clause].
2. Line up the thumbnails. What is the focal subject in every winner? What emotion? What's never there?
3. Name the core promise in one sentence: what feeling does the viewer come to have? (Crime channel: "I saw the twist coming before the detective." Tech channel: "I avoided an expensive mistake." Fitness channel: "I can restart after falling off.")
4. Autopsy the flops against it. Which element of the promise did each flop break — premise, resolution, packaging tone, pacing? The broken element becomes a "never" rule.
5. Set benchmarks from the channel's own winners (retention at 0:30 / 2:00, typical velocity) — not from industry averages.
6. Calibrate the levers. Same six levers, channel-specific volume: how hot should tension run? What kind of conflict does this audience accept? How long should resolutions linger?

Profile Output Format

Deliver (and save, if the user wants it reused) a profile containing:

Section	Content
Core promise	One sentence — the feeling viewers come for
The formula	2–4 numbered rules the winners share
Evidence table	Winners + flops with the formula kept/broken
Title pattern	Fill-in skeleton from the winners
Packaging rules	Thumbnail focal subject, emotion, never-list
Kill-zone rule	What the first 30s must show (confirm the click)
Benchmarks	Retention/velocity targets from the channel's own data
Lever calibration	Tension level, conflict type, resolution length
Never-list	Every promise-break found in a flop

• Where to save: the profile is channel-private strategy — save it as a personal skill (~/.claude/skills/<channel-name>-formula/) or a private note, not in a public repo.
• The profile overrides generic skills where they conflict — state this in the profile so future scripting sessions respect it.

Applying the Profile (every future video)

• Check the premise against the core promise before scripting — a formula-breaking premise gets reframed, not polished (a mentor-betrays-student premise on a "mentors you can trust" channel becomes "the red flags that expose a bad mentor").
• Title from the title pattern; thumbnail from the packaging rules; opening frame confirms the thumbnail.
• After publish, run retention-audit; feed every new winner/flop back into the profile. The formula is living — two lines of update per video.

Common Mistakes

Mistake	Fix
Formula from niche stereotypes ("crime = shocking")	Extract from THIS channel's winners only
Only studying winners	Flops define the never-list — the formula is in the difference
One video treated as a pattern	3+ winners minimum; otherwise mark provisional
Formula written once, never updated	Update after every publish via retention-audit
Channel profile committed to a public repo	Private skill/note — it's competitive strategy
Formula treated as a cage	It constrains premise and packaging, not creativity within them

Formula Checklist

• 3+ winners and ≥1 flop examined?
• Core promise stated in one sentence?
• Title pattern written as a fill-in skeleton?
• Every flop mapped to a broken rule (never-list)?
• Benchmarks taken from the channel's own data?
• Levers calibrated to the audience's tension tolerance?
• Profile saved privately for reuse?

Related

• retention-audit — post-publish diagnosis that feeds this profile.
• titles-and-thumbnails / long-form-youtube / storytelling-hooks — the generic craft the profile calibrates.