I'm building an app that creates, edits and posts short videos on its own. To test it in public, it runs two Instagram accounts by itself: one in English since October 21 and one in Italian since October 22. Nobody edits the videos; when something comes out wrong we fix the app. Here's how the autopilot works, and what week 1 looked like.
How the autopilot works
1. A plan per calendar week. Every Monday, in the audience's time zone, a worker plans Monday to Sunday: the slots (at the audience's best times, up to 2 a day), a role for each slot (core format, sales or test, with fixed shares counted over the last 4 weeks), the format for each slot, a hook and an ending, and an idea. Switch it on mid-week and the first plan only runs to Sunday, so the next one starts with a full week of data.
2. Formats are picked with Thompson sampling. For each core slot it draws a random number around each format's score, wider when the format has little data, and the highest wins. No format gets more than 60% of the core slots over 4 weeks. In week 1 there's no data, so every format is equal and the plan is mostly tests.
3. Videos are made about 30 hours before their slot. A Postgres cron job (pg_cron) checks every 10 minutes for approved slots going out within 30 hours and queues the video.
4. Making one video. A small language model writes the script, then fills a JSON scene file that follows the style's schema. The model never writes code. A fact-check pass reads the script first. A text-to-speech voice reads the lines and returns word timings, which set each scene's length and the captions. Remotion renders 1080×1920 at 30 fps inside a container that only runs when there's work. The language-model parts are cheap: title and caption about 0.1 cents per video, the fact-check about 1 cent.
5. Learning at day 7. Each video gets a score from reach, watch time and actions. Each number is divided by the median of the account's recent mature videos on the same network, in log scale, so a 300-view account and a 300,000-view account both have a "×1". Small numbers are smoothed toward the account's usual. Hits count at most ×3 and flops at least ×0.33 for their format. It needs at least 5 scored videos before it learns anything.
Week 1: the cold start, in numbers
Read on Monday, October 26. Only videos made by HypeFox; one demo video we posted ourselves on each account is left out.
| English account (Oct 21–25) | Italian account (Oct 22–25) | |
|---|---|---|
| Videos posted | 9 | 7 |
| Views | 1,074 (49–175 per video) | 1,019 (120–232) |
| Swiped away in the first 3 s (avg) | 57% | 58% |
| Avg watch time | 6.1 s of ~34 s | 6.3 s of ~36 s |
| Likes / saves / comments / shares | 3 / 4 / 2 / 0 | 4 / 1 / 0 / 0 |
| Followers | 2 → 5 | 1 → 4 |
| Signups from the account | 0 | 0 |
Point 5 is why week 1 can't be smart: no video is 7 days old yet, so there's nothing to learn from. The Monday report says it plainly: "no numbers yet". The first videos turn 7 days old on Wednesday, and next Monday's plan will be the first one built on the account's own numbers.
What surprised me
- The best English video, made by the AI, was titled "An AI tool can't run your account by itself" (175 views, 44% swiped away, the best hold on that account).
- The polished demo we made ourselves was the most skipped video of the week: 99% swiped away in 3 seconds on the English account. The AI's plain explainers kept about 43 out of 100 viewers past 3 seconds.
- The two sales videos ("DM me PLAN") held worse than average and nobody sent the word.
- 14 of 16 videos landed between 116 and 232 views: a new account's test audience, and nothing broke out yet.
What we changed (the app, never a video)
We rebuilt the main style on day 1 (drawn places, moving icons, a moving camera), added background music, and picked new script instructions with blind tests judged by models that didn't know which version they were reading.
Next
Week 2 is running: 14 videos per account, still without lessons. I'll post the numbers every Monday, including the first week the learning loop actually kicks in.
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