Show HN: Jottings; Anti-social microblog for your thoughts
7 comments
·December 12, 2025blargwill
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.
bastulos
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.
vishalvshekkar
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.
jimmydoe
If I were to self host, a Mastodon/Pleroma/Misskey with federation turned off seems better choice?
uniqueuid
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.
vishalvshekkar
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!
pentaphobe
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" :)
I built Jottings because I was tired of my own thoughts getting trapped inside algorithmic feeds where I had to perform. There was a huge mental load before posting something on X or Instagram.
Every time I wanted to share something small or unfinished, I opened Twitter and lost 20 minutes to the timeline. Writing a blog post felt too heavy for those smaller, quick thoughts. I just wanted a place to write something down quickly and hit publish.
Jottings is that place. It gives you a clean microblog on a domain you own. Posts show up in simple chronological order. No likes. No followers. No feed trying to decide what matters.
What Jottings is - A microblogging platform that builds fully static microblog sites - A free subdomain (you.jottings.me) or connect your own domain on PRO plans - Markdown, tags, RSS feed, links with preview, and image uploads - An optional AI writing helper when you are stuck or lazy to fix grammar - Optimized for SEO and AI search friendly - Analytics for your sites
What it is not - Not a social network - Not an engagement funnel - Not trying to keep you on the site - Not a replacement for long-form blogging, though you can use it that way
How it works Each Jot publish triggers a static site rebuild. The site is stored in Cloudflare R2 and served directly at the edge. Custom domains go through Cloudflare SSL for SaaS. I built it to be boring, reliable (barring Cloudflare's latest issues), and cheap to run.
Pricing Free tier for a subdomain, text posts, and a lot more. USD5 per month for custom domains, images, full Markdown, and the writing helper. I priced it to be an easy yes.
Limitations - No comments (on purpose) - No native apps yet (iOS is coming) - The writing helper is helpful but not magic - I am a solo founder, so features move at human speed
I use Jottings regularly to document what I build. It has been the lowest-friction way I have found to publish anything publicly.
Demo of Jottings site for product updates: https://jottings.jottings.me/ Demo of my personal Jottings site: https://jottings.vishalvshekkar.com (with custom subdomain)
I would love feedback from this community. What would make this better or more useful for you?
Check it out here: https://jottings.me (2 min set up) Feel free to write to me at vishal@vishalvshekkar.com
— Vishal