Archive

March 2026

I’m experimenting with the MCP protocol for Jottit and have the basics of it working. I can now create new pages by prompting Claude on my mobile or ask it to summarise pages, make edits, etc. I’m not sure what to think of it yet, but I’m definitely intrigued…

Customization easily becomes complexity. How much is too much? For Tinypost I landed on two settings: light or dark, plus an accent color. Enough to feel like yours. Not enough to turn into a site builder. Hopefully :) tinypost.blog

Redesigned the blogroll on Tinypost today. Single column now, sorted by latest activity, with favicons pulled from RSS feeds. The blogroll also moved into the profile header as a row of stacked avatars linking to the full list. Much more compact than the old two-column grid. tinypost.blog

I just redesigned the Tinypost signup process and this is how a newly created blog on Tinypost now looks like.

I made another attempt at getting some attention on Hacker News yesterday, but fell flat again. 5 points and 2 comments. Moving on now and betting on organic growth from there on.

I redesigned Jottit’s URLs. Instead of yourname.jottit.org, pages now live at jottit.org/@username/page-slug. It’s a small change but it shifts the whole feel: less “here’s a site” and more “here’s a person writing something.” My own page now lives at …

Posted Jottit to Hacker News today. Was nervous about it. 90 minutes later: zero points. Laughing at myself. Trying again tomorrow. jottit.org

Here’s what my own Jottit site looks like when signed in as editor sbc.jottit.org

I had a small revelation about Jottit. I’d been thinking of it as a site builder. Then someone here created a post and shared it with me, and it clicked. Jottit is for putting stuff on the web. Create a page, share it. Claim it and it shows up on your profile. So I redesigned it. jottit.org

I wrote about loss, the old web, and why I rebuilt Jottit. simonbc.com/rebuildin…

I’m a few days away from launching Jottit.org, a revival of the minimalist wiki tool Aaron Swartz and I built in 2007. If you have a few minutes, I’d love for you to kick the tires. Looking for bug reports and first impressions. Thanks! @manton @dave jottit.org

I’m a few days away from launching Jottit.org, a revival of the minimalist wiki tool Aaron Swartz and I built in 2007. If you have a few minutes, I’d love for you to kick the tires. Looking for bug reports and first impressions. Thanks! @manton @davewiner jottit.org

Aaron Swartz and I built Jottit in 2007 as the simplest way to make a web page. I’ve been rebuilding it, but it drifted too far. So I split it in two! jottit.org is the original, rebuilt. tinypost.blog is a new minimalist blogging tool. simonbc.com/why-i-spl…

Aaron Swartz and I built Jottit in 2007 as the simplest way to make a web page. I’ve been rebuilding it, but it drifted too far. So I split it in two! jottit.org is the original, rebuilt. tinypost.blog is a new minimalist blogging tool. simonbc.com/why-i-split-jottit-into-two-apps

Currently alternating between painting walls and shipping code. The walls are going slower.

February 2026

Dave Winer’s blogroll on scripting.com works differently from the traditional model. Instead of a fixed list you update by hand, it pulls in feeds and sorts by when each blog was last updated. The most recently active blogs float to the top. This is the version I wanted to build into Jottit.

New post: How blogrolls work in Jottit simonbc.com/how-blogr…

New on Jottit: blogrolls. Shows site avatars and latest posts, ordered by most recently active. Here’s mine: simonbc.com/blogroll Time to bring blogrolls back.

Jottit sites now have a blogroll sidebar showing each site’s latest post and how long ago it was published. Ordered by most recently updated, so active blogs rise to the top. Inspired by @dave ’s blogroll. Also exposed as OPML for feed readers.

Had to fix a few bugs, but I’m now posting to my Jottit site from the terminal using mpcli. I’d planned to build my own Jottit CLI, but there’s no need. The true magic of open protocols.

Jottit now supports Micropub. You can post to your blog from any Micropub-compatible editor, including your terminal. Testing it out right now with mpcli. The dream is real :)

I asked my wife to give Jottit a try. Turns out a newly created Jottit site looks… just terrible :) I have been doing UI testing on my own Jottit site, which has posts, a bio, an avatar, etc. set up. But without any of that, the UI doesn’t work at all. Time for a redesign.

2 hours later: shipped it. @jottit/jot is live on npm. My first npm package. Headless ProseMirror editor that stores clean markdown, with an optional bubble menu for formatting. Integrated into Jottit and feels completely native. MIT licensed. github.com/Jottit/jo…

Hey @dave I’m building Jottit (jottit.pub), a simple blogging platform, and I’m about to add a WYSIWYG editor that stores markdown. A lot like the Wordland editor. I’m curious how you built it? ProseMirror-based or something custom? Planning to open-source mine as a headless …

Starting a fun small project: an open-source, headless WYSIWYG editor that stores markdown. I need it for Jottit. The Jottit editor has been straight markdown so far, but most people need WYSIWYG to enjoy writing. Simple ProseMirror wrapper. Making it a separate package for others to use.

I just deployed custom domains and basic designs settings for Jottit. One of the core values of Jottit is self-expression and having your own personal domain is fundamental to that. So is basic design choices like fonts and colors. More to come!

I just deployed custom domains and basic designs settings for Jottit. One of the core value of Jottit is self-expression and having your own domain is fundamental to that. So is basic design choices like fonts and colors.

A big reason things move so fast with AI: I’ve kept the stack old-school simple. I’m using Flask, Postgres, Jinja2 and vanilla JS/CSS. Everything is SSR sprinkled with JS islands. This makes it so much easier for Claude to generate code that’s simple, well-written, and actually …

Moving at incredible speed today: already done with RSS, images, avatars, drafts, account deletion, export. Months of design decisions on Jottit v1 means I know exactly how things should work. Pair that with Claude, and I’m shipping features at a ridiculous pace.

Hey @rom, wanted to let you know I’ve made a big pivot with Jottit. Your bug reports on the old version were really helpful, thank you! The new Jottit is focused on blogging, no more wiki-style pages. Much simpler under the hood. Would love for you to give it a spin!

After 4 months working on Jottit I’m starting over. I kept using it to blog, but it was built for pages and wiki-style editing. And the tech I was excited about — git-backed, everything as files — was stuff 99% of people would never care about.

After 4 months working on Jottit I’m starting over. I kept using it to blog, but it was built for pages and wiki-style editing. And the tech I was excited about — git-backed, everything as files — was stuff 99% of people would never care about. #indieweb #jottit

IndieAuth is now live on Jottit. Every site gets an authorization endpoint, so you can use your Jottit URL to sign in anywhere that supports it. Still early, expect bugs :)

Building open infrastructure for the web is important work. It’s also work that nobody quite knows how to pay for. I wrote about my own experience figuring this out with Jottit. simonbc.com/blog/2026…

Here’s the thing. For Jottit to truly become a commons infrastructure, it has to be replaceable. Otherwise it’s just another platform that locks in. This is why Jottit is built on open protocols as much as possible. To make it one implementation of something that could have many implementations.

Jottit makes creating a website really easy. Which is true, but… Here’s a different way of thinking about Jottit that really excites me: as an open infrastructure for web publishing. Micropub-compatible, file-based storage, git-backed, zero lock-in. The commons layer the web never got.

First step toward full IndieWeb support for Jottit: social links. Add your GitHub, Mastodon, or other profiles in settings and they’ll appear in your footer with proper rel=“me” verification.

Starting IndieAuth for Jottit today: building auth endpoints so people can publish from any Micropub client. Love how IndieWeb specs are small and focused, composing beautifully. First: consent screen + JSON token files. File-based storage makes it straightforward.

January 2026

One thing that’s really cool about Jottit is that all pages are stored as files in git repositories. A side effet of this is that you can actually clone your repository onto your own machine and edit pages, templates and css in your facvorite editor and then push your changes to have your site …

Export means you can leave. True ownership means you can change anything. That’s what I’m trying to build with the new Jottit. simonbc.com/notes/202…

I’m rebuilding Jottit, a tool for simple web publishing I originally built with Aaron Swartz in 2007. Here’s how it got started: simonbc.com/notes/202…