Colophon

A colophon describes the tools, technologies, and processes behind a website. This page documents how Aether Mug is built and published.

Platform

Content Pipeline

Posts are MDX files with YAML frontmatter, stored in the filesystem — no traditional CMS. Content is compiled at build time with mdx-bundler and a chain of remark/rehype plugins for GitHub Flavored Markdown, KaTeX math rendering, figure captions, and external link handling.

  • New posts scaffolded with Plop templates
  • Image optimization via Sharp — resize to 800px, convert to WebP
  • RSS, Atom, and JSON Feed generated at build time
  • Sitemap via next-sitemap

Newsletter & Comments

  • Buttondown for email newsletters with audience tag filtering
  • Custom comment system — subscribers only, with ALTCHA proof-of-work verification instead of CAPTCHAs
  • Webhook-driven reply notifications
  • CI pipeline auto-creates newsletter drafts on each deploy

IndieWeb

Analytics & Privacy

  • Self-hosted Plausible analytics — no cookies, no tracking
  • ALTCHA proof-of-work for form spam protection — no CAPTCHAs, no third-party dependencies

AI-Assisted Workflow

Much of the publishing workflow is orchestrated by Claude Code through a set of custom agent skills and subagents:

  • Post finalization — a sequential pre-publication pipeline with human review gates at each step: cover image resize, link normalization, semantic tagging, prose proofreading, image alt-text generation, metadata generation, and social media draft creation
  • Prose proofreading — a subagent tuned for non-native English writing, improving flow and naturalness beyond grammar corrections
  • Image alt-text generation — WCAG-compliant accessibility descriptions for all post images
  • Post connectivity — AI-powered semantic analysis of post relationships with interactive terminal review for curating inline and related-post links
  • POSSE syndication — generates social media threads optimized for character limits while preserving the author's voice
  • Issue tracking — Beads, a git-native CLI issue tracker for managing multi-session projects with dependencies

Social Syndication

Following the POSSE principle (Publish on Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere), posts are published here first, then syndicated to X and Bluesky via Typefully, and to newsletter subscribers via Buttondown.

License

All original content is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.