Set Up Competitor Tracking

Trend analysis studies what’s working for successful channels in your niche. This data feeds back into your content generation to make it better.

Step 1: Discover Channels

Go to Tracked Channels in the sidebar (under Analysis)
In the Discover Channels section:
- Enter a niche label (e.g., gaming, finance, ai-tools)
- Enter a search query (e.g., “gaming shorts”, “money tips shorts”)
- Click Discover

The system searches YouTube and returns matching channels with subscriber counts and descriptions.

Step 2: Track Competitors

Click Track on channels that create Shorts similar to what you want to make. Look for:

Channels with 10K-500K subscribers (big enough to have data, small enough to be achievable)
Active Shorts creators (posting at least weekly)
Content style similar to your target (same niche, similar tone)

Track 5-10 channels per niche. This gives enough data for meaningful pattern analysis.

Step 3: Ingest Their Videos

After tracking channels, scroll down to the Next Steps section and click Ingest Videos. This:

Pulls up to 50 recent uploads from each tracked channel
Filters to Shorts only (≤3 minutes)
Fetches auto-generated captions when available
Stores everything in the database

Step 4: Analyze Videos

Click Analyze Videos. The AI (Claude) examines each ingested video and classifies:

Hook type (question, shock stat, bold claim, nostalgia)
Emotional tone (educational, shocking, funny, inspirational)
Visual style (talking head, stock footage, text overlay)
Title pattern and CTA strategy
Topic tags

Step 5: Take Snapshots

Click Take Snapshots. This records the current view count, likes, and comments for each tracked video. Run this periodically — the system takes snapshots at 1h, 4h, 24h, 48h, and 7 days after each video’s publish date.

Viewing Results

Video Explorer (sidebar) — Browse all tracked videos with analysis badges and velocity indicators
Trends Overview — Summary stats per niche with links to configs

Tips

Run ingest weekly to keep pulling new competitor content
Run analyze after each ingest to classify new videos
Run snapshots daily to build growth curve data
Don’t track channels in completely different niches — the analysis will be diluted