alt.hn

12/12/2025 at 8:32:13 AM

Show HN: Jottings; Anti-social microblog for your thoughts

 https://jottings.me/

by vishalvshekkar

12/12/2025 at 11:19:09 AM

Feels very similar to Digital Gardens - something I've been doing to hit all the same points! (Shameless plug to mine as an example https://launchbowl.com)

This product does provide a bit more of a structured approach without any of the self-hosting/coding difficulty which I think would have a wider market appeal.

by blargwill

12/12/2025 at 11:44:50 AM

Ha! Very cool! I did not know about the community/idea of Digital Gardens! From my quick glance, it seems close to a lot of my thoughts. I like what you have done with Launchbowl! The part about linking multiple posts together is something I swear by for personal writing & note-taking on Anytype. Graph is a very efficient way to process a lot of connected information!

Thank you! Yes, Jottings was built for anyone, even with no tech experience, to set up and have a site where they may post their thoughts to the world.

by vishalvshekkar

12/12/2025 at 10:36:23 AM

Given you are already offering the product for free it would be cool to have a self hosted option.

Typically I'm not the one to suggest this on hobby projects being made into a product bc you gotta make money somehow to support this and I respect that to some appreciable degree.

by bastulos

12/12/2025 at 11:03:04 AM

I hear you. I actually am quite open to making Jottings self-host-able. I might want to slice the multi-tenant layer out before I do that, only because that is complicated and not needed for someone to host and manage multiple sites, and is the part that primarily makes this a product. I'll give it a think.

I also hear you about the making money part, and I largely agree.

by vishalvshekkar

12/12/2025 at 10:50:24 AM

If I were to self host, a Mastodon/Pleroma/Misskey with federation turned off seems better choice?

by jimmydoe

12/12/2025 at 10:25:13 AM

It's always nice to see products that cater to the best users can be instead of the worst.

Personally, AI for writing is in the same corner as the other pathologies you've listed (popularity counts etc), so it's not for me. But some folks will see that differently.

by uniqueuid

12/12/2025 at 11:07:21 AM

Thank you!

I hear you, and I share a big part of that opinion on AI writing. From the feedback I got from some folks before, it seemed to be something many were interested in, which is why I designed it to be very aid-like, and less to generate content fully from scratch and post automatically: essentially spamming.

I am not very sold on the AI tool and am very open to removing it with more such opinions!

by vishalvshekkar

12/14/2025 at 4:45:50 AM

I bought jotnus.com for similar idea but it never saw a light of the day.

by bhu1st

12/13/2025 at 2:46:08 PM

Don't make links color the same on dark mode.

Other than that, I really like it. I hope this becomes a trend, and stays this way.

by nwhnwh

12/12/2025 at 3:44:28 PM

Not sure if you accounted for tablets but it just looks far too packed. Concept is great though.

by linhns

12/13/2025 at 10:38:43 AM

Oh, is it? I did brief tests on my iPad and didn't find any glaring issues.

Could you help me with what device and screen size you find it cluttered? Which of these do you find cluttered on your tablet? - Landing page: https://jottings.me - Dashboard: https://dashboard.jottings.me - A Jottings Site: Example: https://jottingsjottings.me

by vishalvshekkar

12/12/2025 at 6:15:04 PM

Is there a way to permalink to a specific microblog post?

by gradientsrneat

12/13/2025 at 3:03:13 AM

Currently, only the perma-part of permalink is possible per post (or jot). Something like this: https://jottings.vishalvshekkar.com/jots/19620509 always links to that specific jot. Where `19620509` is the permanently assigned ID to that specific jot.

It is not human-readable and not extracted from the post (jot) itself because the post may be edited and over time, may go out of sync.

But, I am open to allowing this setting to be adjusted per site, where the site owner may choose to go with a human-readable ID that is extracted from the jot content.

Is your need more the stable permanent link to a jot, or a human readable permanent one, @gradientsrneat?

by vishalvshekkar

12/12/2025 at 11:25:58 AM

Big fan of this trend, well done!

Personally this kind of thing is just always gonna be self hosted or local only, but I see the appeal for folks who don't have that option

Brief off-topic greybeard cloud yell: I hate that we've all adopted the colloquial use of "algorithm".

Although it's interesting to imagine whether software is even possible with "no algorithm" :)

by pentaphobe

12/12/2025 at 11:56:19 AM

Thank you very much! Yeah, I agree. In fact, even Jottings started as something I built for my own use as a stand-alone site that I used to host. Made it into a production for others to use only after someone of my friends asked me for a similar site. I used to feed my post (or Jots) data to my build system through a json file that I updated to add new jots.

I hope that the appeal is real for a good bunch of folks.

Haha! You gave me a chuckle! And a totally fair yell! :) Valid CS philosophical musings aside, may be I should be a bit more specific to something like "personalized feed ranking".

by vishalvshekkar