@Scale
Meta's Tune-Your-Algorithm framework uses distilled LLMs and reasoning pipelines to let users explicitly direct their recommendation feeds, cutting compute costs by 100x while replacing black-box collaborative filtering.
AI-assisted summary of Tuning Your Algorithm with MRS Memory System and Think-Then-Recommend (TTR) | Qi Guo from Meta — original source. Check the original for full context.
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## Background Published by @Scale on YouTube on July 7, 2026, this talk features Qi Guo from Meta presenting Tune-Your-Algorithm (TYA), an AI-powered agentic recommendation system on Instagram. The page description highlights how TYA grants users natural-language control over their feed using the MRS Memory System (Biography) and Think-Then-Recommend (TTR) reasoning architecture.
## TL;DR The presentation details Meta's shift from black-box collaborative filtering to transparent, user-steerable recommendation systems via Tune-Your-Algorithm (TYA). TYA leverages 'Biography' to translate raw interaction histories into structured, hierarchical user interest profiles, cutting compute costs by 100x through model distillation. It then pairs this memory with 'Think-Then-Recommend' (TTR), an explicit reasoning step that decomposes complex or ambiguous natural-language user inputs into precise vector search sub-goals. Early MVP results show strong user adoption, paving the way for Meta's vision of proactive, multi-turn conversational feeds.
## Atmosphere & style The presentation carries an optimistic, highly technical, and forward-looking energy typical of an engineering tech keynote. Qi Guo delivers a structured, authoritative narrative that bridges industry pain points with cutting-edge architectural solutions. The tone strikes a balance between practical product engineering and visionary ambition, grounded by clear real-world examples and a pragmatic 'MVP-first' development philosophy.
## Key takeaways - [00:05](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-FiLm__jVY&t=5s) Recommendation systems have evolved into a core economic engine generating ~$1 trillion annually, yet modern Collaborative Filtering still creates a 'black-box echo chamber' that ignores dynamic individual motivations. - [02:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-FiLm__jVY&t=160s) To address organic user demand for algorithmic transparency and control, Meta developed Tune Your Algorithm (TYA), an AI-powered agentic recommendation framework. - [04:23](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-FiLm__jVY&t=263s) TYA provides an intuitive 3-step user experience (View, Tune, Sync) using interactive natural-language interest pills, driving strong early product-market fit and user sentiment. - [06:57](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-FiLm__jVY&t=417s) The system operates on a 5-step agentic loop connecting direct human feedback to large-scale retrieval and ranking pipelines. - [07:51](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-FiLm__jVY&t=471s) The MRS Memory System ('Biography') transforms raw interaction logs into a multi-level, hierarchical natural-language representation of user interests. - [10:02](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-FiLm__jVY&t=602s) Through LLM distillation and domain-specific fine-tuning, Meta reduced Biography's compute costs by 100x while outperforming a 100x larger base model. - [10:02](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-FiLm__jVY&t=602s) Biography enables proactive interest discovery by mapping conceptual relationships and expanding user affinity graphs across related entities. - [11:34](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-FiLm__jVY&t=694s) Think-Then-Recommend (TTR) introduces an explicit reasoning step to resolve semantic ambiguity and decompose vague user prompts into personalized sub-goals. - [13:22](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-FiLm__jVY&t=802s) TTR effectively handles abstract intent realization, connecting high-level life goals (e.g., 'I want to be healthier') with a user's unique context to deliver tailored content. - [14:42](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-FiLm__jVY&t=882s) Meta adopted an MVP-first strategy to validate user demand, using familiar interest pills before expanding toward a fully multi-turn conversational North Star vision. - [16:12](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-FiLm__jVY&t=972s) Next-generation technical focus areas include persistent cross-sessional memory, proactive interest discovery, intent lifecycle management, and multi-step tool orchestration. - [18:27](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-FiLm__jVY&t=1107s) Achieving high ROI and low latency for scaling agentic recommendation systems across billions of users relies on heavy model distillation, fine-tuning, and GPU pipeline automation.
## Detailed walkthrough ### [00:05](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-FiLm__jVY&t=5s) The $1 Trillion Industry and the Black-Box Echo Chamber
The talk opens with a high-level overview of the scale and history of recommendation systems (RecSys). Quoting Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Qi Guo highlights that recommendation engines are "everywhere"—powering everything from video recommendations and targeted advertising to e-commerce and movie suggestions. By 2025, recommendation systems serve as a core economic backbone, driving approximately $1 trillion in digital platform revenue and growing at a 35% compound annual rate for enterprise adoption across cloud and AI services.
RecSys has evolved dramatically over four decades: from 1990s rule-based logic to 2000s matrix factorization, 2010s deep learning, and finally the 2020s LLM and Transformer era. Despite these advancements, modern recommendation systems still rely heavily on Collaborative Filtering (CF). While CF is extremely powerful at surfacing content based on co-engagement patterns, it fundamentally creates a "black box echo chamber." It limits users to seeing what similar users watch, failing to account for dynamic, highly individual motivations—whether a user comes to a platform for pure entertainment, staying up-to-date on news, or deep-dive learning.
- **Market Scale:** RecSys accounts for ~$1T in digital platform revenue (2025) with a 35% YoY growth rate in enterprise cloud/AI integration over the next decade. - **Evolutionary Eras:** - **1990s:** Rule-based systems - **2000s:** Matrix factorization - **2010s:** Deep learning - **2020s:** LLMs and Transformer-based recommendation models - **Collaborative Filtering Limitation:** Creates an echo chamber where "one size doesn't really fit all" across diverse user motivations.
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[02:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-FiLm__jVY&t=160s) "The Algo": Latent User Demand and Meta's Vision
User desire to explicitly steer recommendation algorithms is not new, but it has recently erupted into public discourse. Qi Guo points to popular organic user behaviors, such as "The Algo" meme on Threads, where users post natural-language posts explicitly telling the platform, "Hey, I want to see more of this. I want to see less of that." Similar conversations occur on X, where users ask Elon Musk for direct algorithmic control. Even Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has noted a vision where users will converse with Meta platforms to shape their feed experience down to pixel-level generation.
To address this demand, Qi Guo and his team across Meta Recommendation Systems (MRS), Instagram, and Facebook built **Tune Your Algorithm (TYA)**. TYA provides an AI-powered agentic recommendation framework consisting of two main innovations: the **MRS Memory System (Biography)** and **Think-Then-Recommend (TTR)**.
- **Latent Demand Manifestations:** "The Algo" text posts on Threads and open user queries on X. - **Zuckerberg's Vision:** Conversational steering moving toward real-time pixel-level generated recommendations. - **Collaborating Teams:** Meta Recommendation Systems (MRS), Instagram, and Facebook engineering groups.
---
[04:23](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-FiLm__jVY&t=263s) TYA User Experience and Early Product-Market Fit
From a user perspective, Tune Your Algorithm (TYA) replaces implicit, opaque feedback loops with transparent, natural-language controls. When users open the TYA interface, they are presented with a concise natural-language summary of what the system thinks they have been up to lately, accompanied by interactive "interest pills" (keywords summarizing detected interests). Users can directly tune their feed by adding or removing these interest pills. Upon editing, the system immediately syncs the updated topics as a "new contract" for future recommendations.
Early results show strong product-market fit, particularly among younger audiences. Users report that modifying their feed with a single tap and seeing immediate results feels "like a dream come true." Press coverage has praised TYA as a "new level of control that feels long overdue," contrasting it with traditional platforms like TikTok, which only offer a static, predefined list of generic topic choices.
- **3-Step User Journey:** 1. **View:** Read natural-language summary of recent activity and topic interest pills. 2. **Tune:** Add, edit, or remove interest pills using natural language. 3. **Sync:** System adopts the updated profile as the active contract for recommendations. - **User Reaction:** Described as an "Aha moment" due to real-time feed updates without tedious implicit scrolling/curation. - **Press Contrast:** Moves past TikTok's rigid, fixed topic lists by offering fully personalized, unconstrained interest customization.
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[06:57](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-FiLm__jVY&t=417s) Under the Hood: The 5-Step Agentic Recommendation Loop
Behind the user interface, TYA operates as an agentic loop comprising five distinct architectural stages. The workflow connects human feedback directly to large-scale retrieval and ranking pipelines.
1. **User Input:** Natural language prompts or edits to interest pills submitted via the UI. 2. **Biography Memory System:** Merges new user inputs with the system's existing knowledge base of user history. 3. **Think-Then-Recommend (TTR):** Executes reasoning to translate user inputs and memory into personalized sub-goals. 4. **Retrieval & Ranking:** Queries large-scale embedding spaces to fetch and rank contextually relevant items. 5. **Output:** Delivers a fully tailored feed response directly aligned with the user's explicit request.
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[07:51](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-FiLm__jVY&t=471s) The MRS Memory System: "Biography"
At the center of TYA is **Biography**, an LLM-based memory framework that transforms raw, unstructured user interaction logs into structured text that large language models can analyze. Every interaction—videos watched (e.g., clips of *Suits*, *The Big Bang Theory*, or soccer highlights), photos liked, groups joined, creators followed, and search queries performed—is converted into structured natural language strings detailing watch times and action types.
Biography feeds these textual logs into a specialized LLM to construct a multi-level, hierarchical representation of the user: - **Topics & Subtopics:** High-level categories like Basketball, Soccer, or TV Shows. - **Named Entities & Keywords:** Specific entities like Stephen Curry, NBA, Cristiano Ronaldo, or *Suits*. - **Granular Micro-Interests:** Hyper-specific sub-goals, such as "Curry's famous night-night gestures."
- **Input Signals Translated:** Video watch histories, photo likes, search logs, group memberships, followed creators. - **Hierarchical Output Levels:** Topics/Subtopics → Named Entities/Keywords → Granular Micro-Interests.
---
[10:02](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-FiLm__jVY&t=602s) Model Distillation and Interest Discovery
Running standard LLMs at Meta's scale for every single user interaction is prohibitively expensive. To overcome this, the engineering team spent six months refining the Biography architecture using model distillation and domain-specific fine-tuning. By training a smaller "student" model using the TYA feedback loop and in-domain data, they successfully **reduced computational costs by 100x** while outperforming a general-purpose model 100 times larger.
Beyond summarizing past behaviors, Biography actively powers **interest discovery** by mapping conceptual relationships in an embedding space. For instance, if a user likes Stephen Curry, Biography expands to nearby nodes like the Golden State Warriors and other NBA teams (e.g., Miami Heat). It can then bridge to regional sports like MLS (Inter Miami) and key players like Lionel Messi. Similarly, detecting interest in Super Bowl videos allows the system to surface related pop-culture entities like Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce.
- **Cost Reduction:** 100x compute cost reduction via LLM distillation and domain-specific fine-tuning. - **Performance:** Student model outperforms a 100x larger base LLM on domain-specific user understanding. - **Discovery Graph Examples:** - *Stephen Curry* → Golden State Warriors / NBA → Miami Heat → Inter Miami (MLS) → Lionel Messi. - *Super Bowl* → NFL → Taylor Swift & Travis Kelce.
---
[11:34](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-FiLm__jVY&t=694s) Think-Then-Recommend (TTR): Decomposing Complex Intents
To utilize Biography's rich memory profiles for real-time recommendations, Meta introduced **Think-Then-Recommend (TTR)**. Simple prompts like "I want to see more soccer" carry vast semantic ambiguity based on who is asking. For a Lionel Messi fan, "soccer" should surface Inter Miami, Argentina national team, and World Cup news. For a youth athlete or parent, it should mean training drills and skill tutorials. For a Real Madrid fan, it means Cristiano Ronaldo highlights and Portuguese national team coverage.
TTR inserts a explicit "thinking step" between intent detection and retrieval. It combines the raw user prompt with the Biography memory profile, running reasoning operations to generate nuanced "reasoning factors." These factors map ambiguous prompts into tailored sub-goals, which are then converted into vectors to query billion-scale embedding spaces for item retrieval.
- **Messi Fan Prompt:** Soccer → Inter Miami / Argentina / World Cup news. - **Parent/Athlete Prompt:** Soccer → Fundamental drills and physical training videos. - **Real Madrid Fan Prompt:** Soccer → Cristiano Ronaldo highlights / Portugal national team. - **Scale:** Performs vector space retrieval across billion-scale item catalogs.
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[13:22](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-FiLm__jVY&t=802s) Handling Abstract Intent Realization
TTR excels at breaking down broad, non-specific human goals—such as "I want to be healthier" or "I just moved to San Francisco"—into actionable recommendation pipelines.
For example, if a 30-year-old San Francisco resident who likes Stephen Curry and AI types *"I want to be healthier,"* TTR's reasoning step breaks the goal into distinct sub-intents: 1. **Physical Fitness:** Increasing workout frequency. 2. **Health & Diet:** Improving nutrition. 3. **Sleep & Habits:** Optimizing daily routines.
During the recommendation phase, TTR marries these sub-intents with the user's specific context. Instead of serving generic fitness clips, the system prioritizes basketball workout routines (leveraging the Stephen Curry affinity) and smart fitness technology (leveraging the AI/tech interest).
---
[14:42](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-FiLm__jVY&t=882s) Building the MVP vs. The North Star Vision
Meta intentionally took an agile "MVP mindset" when rolling out TYA. Qi Guo uses an engineering analogy: *"The North Star is building a car, but we started by building a scooter, a bike, and a motorbike first, instead of building isolated wheels, doors, and windows."*
By starting with a UI mechanism users already understood—interactive topic/interest pills—the team validated user demand and gathered production feedback without overwhelming users with complex conversational interfaces. Having proven the concept, Meta is now transitioning toward its **North Star Vision**: an agentic, multi-turn conversational recommendation engine that persists across user sessions.
- **MVP Approach:** Familiar UI (interest pills / topic-following paradigm) to test user feedback quickly. - **North Star Vision:** Multi-turn, multi-session conversational interface that maintains long-term memory and proactively manages dynamic user goals.
---
[16:12](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-FiLm__jVY&t=972s) Next-Generation Capabilities and Technical Roadmap
To bridge the gap between the MVP and the North Star vision, Meta is actively developing next-generation core capabilities across both Biography and TTR.
**Key Technical Focus Areas:** - **Persistent Cross-Sessional Memory:** Upgrading Biography to maintain conversation context across multiple sessions over time. - **Proactive Interest Discovery:** Continuous background operation that detects latent intents and surfaces new topics even without direct user prompts. - **Intent Lifecycle Management:** Distinguishing long-term user interests (e.g., lifelong hobbies) from temporary, short-term intents (e.g., planning a weekend trip or moving to a new city). - **Multi-Step Reasoning & Tool Orchestration:** Expanding TTR's ability to break complex goals into structured sub-goals while coordinating diverse platform tools to fulfill user goals holistically. - **Efficiency at Scale:** Maintaining strict latency and infrastructure cost boundaries as increasingly complex LLM reasoning steps are introduced into production.
[18:27](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-FiLm__jVY&t=1107s) Scalability, ROI Optimization, and Future Outlook for Agentic Recommendations
Qi Guo concludes the presentation by highlighting the operational and engineering challenges of transitioning from traditional recommendation architectures to modern, reasoning-augmented AI systems. Moving to LLM-based agentic frameworks requires a fundamental shift in how system efficiency and return on investment (ROI) are approached. He emphasizes that scaling these complex systems to billions of users demands aggressive pipeline automation to optimize compute overhead and resource allocation effectively.
To bring these agentic models into a "high ROI space," Meta relies heavily on techniques such as model distillation, specialized fine-tuning, and advanced GPU pipeline automation. Guo expresses immense excitement about the future trajectory of AI-driven, agentic recommendation systems, inviting researchers and engineers who share a passion for user agency, transparency, and scalable LLM architectures to reach out and collaborate on advancing the North Star vision of Tune-Your-Algorithm (TYA).
- **Core Techniques for Efficiency**: Utilizing model distillation, targeted fine-tuning, and end-to-end GPU automation to lower latency and operational costs compared to standard recommendation systems. - **Strategic Goal**: Achieving high ROI while serving rich, personalized sub-goals generated by the Think-Then-Recommend (TTR) and MRS Memory frameworks at scale. - **Call to Action**: Inviting community collaboration and outreach to tackle ongoing technical challenges in next-generation, user-tunable AI systems.
## Notable quotes > [00:05](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-FiLm__jVY&t=5s) one size doesn't really fit all — Qi Guo
> [02:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-FiLm__jVY&t=160s) Hey, I want to see more of this. I want to see less of that.
> [04:23](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-FiLm__jVY&t=263s) like a dream come true
> [04:23](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-FiLm__jVY&t=263s) Aha moment
> [04:23](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-FiLm__jVY&t=263s) a new level of control that feels long overdue
> [13:22](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-FiLm__jVY&t=802s) I want to be healthier
> [13:22](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-FiLm__jVY&t=802s) I just moved to San Francisco
> [14:42](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-FiLm__jVY&t=882s) The North Star is building a car, but we started by building a scooter, a bike, and a motorbike first, instead of building isolated wheels, doors, and windows. — Qi Guo
## Mentioned Qi Guo, Meta, Nvidia, Jensen Huang, Threads, X, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Instagram, Facebook, MRS Memory System, Biography, Think-Then-Recommend, TTR, Tune Your Algorithm, TYA, TikTok, Stephen Curry, NBA, Golden State Warriors, Miami Heat, Inter Miami, MLS, Lionel Messi, NFL, Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce, Cristiano Ronaldo, Real Madrid, Suits, The Big Bang Theory
[Source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-FiLm__jVY)