PromoForge

A self-hosted control room that plans, publishes and measures promotion for my YouTube gaming channel.

PromoForge calendar showing scheduled X posts, YouTube Shorts and TikTok clips week by week
The Promote calendar, with X posts, YouTube Shorts and TikTok clips planned week by week.
Platforms
4YouTube, X, TikTok and Instagram
Commits
380since May 2026
Automated tests
5,600+plus in-browser checks
AI
Optionalevery AI step has a no-key path

The problem

Growing a gaming channel means the same chores on four platforms: cutting clips, writing posts, scheduling them, tuning titles and tags, then guessing what worked. Each tool I tried solved one piece, and none of them measured anything.

I wanted one place to do the work, and evidence rather than guesswork about what actually moved the numbers.

What it does

Clip

Shorts Studio scans my recordings, scores the strongest moments and cuts them into vertical clips. It remembers what has already been used, so the same moment is never cut twice.

Clip backlog cards with game thumbnails and the platforms each clip is planned for

Optimise

A step-by-step pipeline rewrites titles, descriptions and tags for search, with a review stage before anything is written back to YouTube.

SEO Optimizer with a five-step pipeline: fetch, rewrite, review, push and restore

Reach new audiences

Localize translates titles and descriptions across the back catalogue within a daily quota budget, with the originals backed up and a one-click restore.

Localize panel showing the scan, translate and apply steps

Measure

Every metadata change is logged with the numbers from just before it, then compared against videos that weren’t changed. That turns “did the SEO rewrite work?” into a question with an answer.

How it’s built

One Flask web app with four feature areas behind it. There is no database: everything lives in local JSON stores, synced between my machines as encrypted backups.

An MCP server lets an AI agent read what PromoForge knows about the channel and leave drafts for me to review. By design, it can never publish.

  • Python
  • Flask
  • JavaScript
  • YouTube Data and Analytics APIs
  • Instagram Graph API
  • Claude API
  • FFmpeg
  • Playwright
  • pytest
  • Docker

How I worked on it

  • Evidence over assumptions

    Every change feeds a measurement back in, with an untreated control group so one lucky video never gets declared a winner.

  • Safety rails

    Drafts before anything goes live, and a quota budget on every API so no job can run through a platform’s limits.

  • Testing at every layer

    A large automated suite, plus scripts that boot the app and check every panel in a real browser.

  • AI-assisted development

    Built with an AI coding agent working from a written rulebook and living design docs, with me setting direction and reviewing the work.

Want to know more?

PromoForge is a private project, so the code isn’t public, but I’m happy to walk you through it.