Original
Building a writing desk that travels
Why this site treats CommonMark as the source of truth, and how a post can leave the desk without losing its shape.
writingpublishingtools
Projects Outline
The shape of the work
Why are you doing this? (Purpose)
Keep a journal that can move between this site, Medium, LinkedIn, and a ChatGPT export without being rewritten.
What are you building? (Product/Service)
A portable writing desk — CommonMark files, a Zod-checked Projects Outline, and small CLI pipelines.
Who are your customers, and how are you helping them? (Customer needs)
Future-Paul, collaborators, and anyone who needs a file they can open in any editor.
What differentiates your product/service from others in the market? (Value add)
The outline is the product schema. Platforms get excerpts; the file stays the source of truth.
What financial and social resources and skill sets do you bring to the table? (Resources)
A static Astro site, TypeScript CLIs, and a clay Zielbild that can light up a slot when a project ships.
How much are you willing to risk/lose to make your idea a reality? (Affordable loss)
A weekend of pipeline work and a public draft. No paid APIs, no lock-in.
What does success look like? (Success)
A new idea can be shared from an iPhone, land as a draft outline, and appear in the landscape when it is ready.
Description
This site keeps posts as portable CommonMark with a small YAML header that now carries a full Projects Outline.
Feasibility
Already running — `pnpm post:new`, `pnpm post:submit`, and share-import write the same schema.
Why Now
Cross-posting without an archive is how notes disappear when a platform redesigns.
Innovation
One outline, three intakes (new, ChatGPT, iOS share), and a 3D slot on the Startseite.
Target & Environment/Context
A quiet personal site. Not a CMS, not a social network.
Costs
Time to fill placeholders honestly. No hosting vendor besides a static build.
Wins
Wins — Now
A desk that formats, validates, and files a note.
Wins — 5 Years
The same files still open, still canonical, still linked from the landscape.
Wins — 25 Years
A readable archive after the current platforms are gone.
Wins — 100 Years
Paper-simple Markdown that a future tool can parse.
Market
People who write in public and do not want a second source of truth.
Alternatives — Macro
A hosted CMS, a Notion database, or "just Twitter."
Alternatives — Micro
Copy-paste into each platform by hand with no schema.
People & Requirements
Paul fills facts. Agents keep the schema and the clay language intact.
Outlook
Share-import and Zielbild slots turn the desk into a project map, not only a blog.
Assets
Schreibpult
- Assets — Concept Board
- Platzhalter
- Assets — Own Visualizations
- Clay workshop in the Quartier zone of the Zielbild landscape.
- Assets — Zielbild integration
- Schreibpult in the Zielbild
This project lights up the workshop in the quarter zone.
Notes
A journal should be easy to move. Not because every note needs an audience on every platform, but because the cost of moving it should be mechanical, not emotional.
This site keeps posts as portable CommonMark with a small YAML header. The header names the work (title, description, date, tags) and records how it arrived (source, sourceUrl, canonicalUrl). The body stays ordinary Markdown: headings, lists, quotes, the kind of file you can open in any editor. The Projects Outline in frontmatter is what the project page renders as structure.
What “OKF-compatible” means here
Open Knowledge Foundation-style publishing favors formats you can take with you. For this desk that means:
- CommonMark that does not depend on a proprietary editor
- Frontmatter that a script can validate
- Canonical links that stay honest when a piece is a repost
The submission pipeline (pnpm post:submit) formats the file, checks the schema, and writes it into the content collection. Optionally it prints paste-ready blurbs for LinkedIn and Medium. Those blurbs are excerpts, not a second source of truth.
A small loop, on purpose
I would rather have a boring, reliable loop than a dashboard that publishes everywhere at once. Draft, format, validate, file, then decide whether the same words should appear somewhere else. If a live API token is missing, the cross-post script still gives you the excerpt. The post on this site does not wait on someone else’s OAuth screen.