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Ratstack Tube

What it does

Ratstack Tube lists videos worth watching while learning this stack. Most are by the people who build the tools: Effect, Alchemy, XState and Cloudflare engineers. Each entry has a tier from S to F, a theme, and a take of one to three sentences that names what the viewer learns.¶

The list lives in .brain/data/tube.json. The TubeVideo schema³⁰ in apps/web/src/client/tube/data.ts defines an entry. The content build reads the file through apps/site/scripts/tube-pages.ts and fails on any bad entry.¶

The page groups videos by theme and orders each theme from S to F. Inside a tier, the file’s order is the editorial order. The S tier also appears as a numbered “Start here” list at the top.¶

A thumbnail loads from YouTube’s image host. The player loads from youtube-nocookie.com, and only after the reader presses play. The built page holds no player at all. Every title links to the video on youtube.com, so a card still works when an image or the player fails.¶

The standard

• Titles and channels come from YouTube’s oEmbed endpoint. Durations and publish dates come from the video page. Each entry records the date it was checked in checked.¶
• A take says only what its source supports. basis records the source: transcript, description (which includes a chapter list in the description), or watched-chapters. Each card shows its check date and basis. A video whose content cannot be confirmed stays off the list.¶
• The list links and embeds only. It never rehosts a video or a thumbnail.¶
• /tube is the only reader page whose content security policy allows images from https://i.ytimg.com and frames from https://www.youtube-nocookie.com. Every other page keeps the reader policy unchanged.¶
• The page says that thumbnails and played videos load from YouTube.¶
• The content build rejects a missing or long take, an unknown theme or basis, and a duplicate id. It also rejects a URL that is not https or does not point at its own video. Each failure is a fence⁵⁰ message that names the entry and the field.¶

To add a video, append an entry to .brain/data/tube.json with facts from YouTube, the date you checked them, and the basis you checked the take against, then rebuild. To remove one, delete its entry.¶

How to check

Run the tube tests:¶

pnpm --filter @rat-stack/web exec vitest run test/tube.data.test.ts test/tube.story.test.ts test/tube.scene.test.ts test/tube.seam.test.ts test/reader-csp.test.ts

They check that ranking orders tiers from S to F and keeps the file’s order inside a tier. They check that one planted fault in a generated list yields one fence message naming its entry and field. They check that the built page holds no player, that a press loads the youtube-nocookie.com player, and that only /tube gets the wider policy.¶

Then read the live page as Markdown:¶

curl --silent 'https://ratstack.sh/tube.md' | head -20

Last changed 2026-11-08 in fa99c83. Source on GitHub. Change log.