Series Naming Builder
An episode-title convention, measured at the episode number you will reach.
- 100% success
Tool input
Overview
About this tool
Builds a numbering convention and reports what it leaves for the actual title on each surface — including the ~40-character YouTube suggested sidebar, where most views come from. The cost is measured at episode 100 rather than episode one, and prefix and suffix are compared rather than one being asserted as correct.
Instructions
How to use it
Give it the series name, a numbering style and where it goes. Set the episode count you expect to reach — that is what the cost is measured at.
A prefix costs more than a suffix
Every surface truncates from the right, so text at the front is the text that always survives. A prefix therefore spends your most reliably visible characters on the part that is identical every week. A suffix inverts it: the title survives and the series name is what gets cut — which is usually the better trade, since the series name is already on the channel and the thumbnail.
Zero-padding is worth it exactly once
It costs a character on episodes 1–9 and buys correct alphabetical sorting forever, which matters wherever titles become filenames or land in an app that sorts as strings — where unpadded numbers go 1, 10, 11, 2.
Questions
Frequently asked
Should the series name go at the start or end of a title?
Usually the end. Every surface truncates from the right, so a prefix spends the always-visible characters on the part that never changes. The exception is when the series is the brand people search for.
How long can a YouTube title be?
100 characters, but the number that matters is where it gets cut: about 70 in desktop search and about 40 in the suggested sidebar, which is where most views come from.
Should I zero-pad episode numbers?
If titles ever become filenames or land somewhere that sorts alphabetically, yes. Unpadded they sort 1, 10, 11, 2 — and padding costs one character until episode 10.
Should podcast episode titles include the show name?
Apple Podcasts asks that they do not, since the app already shows both the show name and the number. Plenty of shows include it anyway; know that you are trading against the guidance.
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