How Retti works, and everything it can do

Retti is a YouTube audience-retention platform: one connected set of tools for diagnosing and fixing where viewers stop watching. This is the plain-English tour of every capability, from analysing a published video to asking an AI copilot why your curve dips.

Updated June 2026 · By the Retti team

Most "YouTube tools" work on the click, keywords, thumbnails, packaging. Retti works on what happens after the click: whether viewers keep watching. Every tool below feeds the same loop, diagnose where attention leaks, then fix the structural cause (hook, pacing, stakes, payoff, transitions) before or after you publish.

The retention workflow, end to end

You don't need every tool for every video. They map onto the natural order of making one:

• Plan the structure before you write, with Video Planner.
• Write a script engineered to hold attention, with Script Writer.
• Review the edit before it ships, with Editing Lab.
• Analyse what happened after it's live, with Video Review.
• Ask a retention copilot anything, at any stage, with Retti AI.

Below, exactly what each one takes in and gives back.

Video Review, analyse a published video

Paste any YouTube link. Retti pulls the transcript and reads the video beat by beat, then maps every drop in the retention curve to the moment that caused it, the over-promised hook, the tangent at 4:20, the payoff that landed ninety seconds late. You get timestamped drop diagnoses, an assessment of hook strength and pacing, the shape of your retention arc, and specific structural changes to make next time. It's the "why did viewers leave, and what do I change" layer that YouTube Studio doesn't give you.

Script Writer, write for retention from the first line

A guided pipeline rather than a single prompt: give it a topic, and it moves through research, scored hook options, a retention-scored outline, and a full script, with timestamped visual direction for your editor. It can match your channel's voice and write toward the patterns that actually hold your niche's audience. There's also a Script Review mode, paste a script or drop a link and Retti shows you where viewers are likely to drop and how to tighten those moments before you ever record.

Editing Lab, catch retention problems before you publish

Upload your edited cut (or paste a link) and Retti reviews it frame by frame, returning timestamped edit notes flagged by severity, the dead air, the energy dips, the soft spots where attention slips. Because it's pre-publish, you can fix them in the timeline instead of learning about them from a flat curve a week later. A voiceover mode goes further: it finds the context gaps in a rough cut and drafts the missing narration lines.

Video Planner, structure the video before you write

Describe the concept, the audience, and the goal, and Video Planner lays out a structure built to hold attention, the hook, the segment order, and the pacing cues. It can pull the weaknesses from a past review so you don't repeat them, and it hands straight off into Script Writer when you're ready to draft.

Retti AI, your retention copilot

Retti AI (we call him Rhett) is a chat assistant focused only on audience retention and viewer drop-off. It's not a general chatbot, and that's the point, it's grounded in a large body of real retention craft, and it can see your actual data. You can:

• Paste a YouTube link and ask for a breakdown, it reads the transcript and walks the hook, pacing, structure, and drop-off zones.
• Paste a script section and ask where viewers will drop, and how to tighten it.
• Upload an image of your retention graph, and it reads the shape, opening cliff, mid-video dip, ending, and tells you what each usually means.
• Go deeper on any Video Review, Script Review, or Editing Lab result, ask why a dip happened and what to change.
• Ask it to rewrite the weak parts, a stronger cold open, a re-hook, a tightened beat.

Hook Lab, build and pressure-test your opening

The first thirty seconds decide most of your retention, so the opening gets its own tool. Hook Lab has three modes: generate spoken-word hook options for your topic, analyse the hook strength of any video by link, or study how a specific creator opens their videos so you can borrow what works.

Retention Dashboard, your whole channel's retention picture

Connect your YouTube channel and Retti reads across your catalogue, not just one video, to surface the retention patterns that repeat: your recurring curve shapes, your proven hook signature, where sessions start and where viewers binge deeper, and how traffic and device shape watch time. It rolls up into a plain-English Channel Report you can export. The connected dashboard is rolling out to Pro accounts in stages, connect your channel to get in line.

What you can do on the free plan

You don't need to pay to see the idea work. The free plan includes one full analysis to start, plus Rhett's Bootcamp (a retention and scriptwriting curriculum), the public Leaderboard of top-scoring videos, and free thumbnail and frame sketchers. Everything else lives on Pro, which unlocks all of the tools above for one price.

Use cases, by what you're trying to fix

How the tools connect

They're one platform, not five apps. A review's weaknesses can flow into your next plan; a plan flows into a script; a script can be retention-checked before you record; and Retti AI can ground itself in any of those results to answer follow-ups. The point is a closed loop, learn what lost viewers on the last video, and build the next one so it doesn't happen again.

Frequently asked questions