Signals
A signal is a cluster whose game count and aggregate CCU are both accelerating across the last pulls — the earliest read that a subject, mechanic, format, or meme is filling up. CCU is a lagging tell, so each signal also carries the leading one: Fᵥ, the favorites gained per visit — early players bookmarking before the return traffic shows up as CCU. Breadth (effective games the players are spread across) says whether it is a lane you can enter or a single hit.
What is going up
Every accelerating cluster, placed by momentum (CCU added per day, up) against breadth (how many games carry it, right). The top-right is the prize — heating up and spread across real games. A dot high but far left is one game blowing up. A blue ring marks an early trend (Fᵥ leading before CCU); a amber ring marks bot-divergence — CCU climbing while favorites stay flat.
Act on these first
Signals both spread across more than a couple of games and bookmarking early — ranked by Fᵥ, the leading signal, not by CCU. Each row carries its caution flag, so a bot-inflated or sponsored spike can't pass as organic demand.
The rule a cluster must clear to flag
A cluster is flagged only when all of these hold:
- It has at least 3 pulls of history (
min_pulls). - Its trailing window rises every step — each pull's game count is ≥ the previous, and each pull's aggregate CCU is ≥ the previous (a lone spike between flat pulls does not qualify).
- The least-squares slope of both game count and CCU against time clears a floor (≥ 1 game/day, ≥ 200 CCU/day — provisional, tuned once real history accumulates).
The leading indicators (Fᵥ, session length, like ratio, sponsored share) and the caution flags are descriptive — they annotate a flagged cluster, they do not change the rule above. The axis carrying the signal is the answer to "new subject or new mechanic": if games sharing a subject accelerate while no single mechanic or format cluster does, only a subject signal fires.
Every signal
Context — the clusters a trend must out-climb
The largest clusters by CCU today. A forming signal is measured against these incumbents. Each sparkline holds one point per pull, becoming a trend line as pulls land.