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Posts

Why posts matter​

Posts are the highest-signal input to your Essence. Every line you publish, every comment you leave, and every reaction you give becomes an EssenceSource — the raw material your House learns from. The more you write on Ratel, the richer your Essence grows, and the more useful your House becomes to the people who subscribe to it.

Where posts live​

The home page (/) is a Spaces arena — a Hot Spaces / My Spaces carousel front-and-center, dropping you straight into whichever Space is most alive in that moment. Posts themselves live at their own dedicated surfaces:

  • Your own post list — /<your-handle>/posts. Infinite-scroll list of every post you've published, newest first. Each row renders as a feed card you can click into.
  • Someone else's posts — /<their-handle>/posts. Same layout; different account.
  • A single post — /posts/:post_id. The shareable, deep-linkable home of an individual post (covered below in Post detail page).

Discovery is link-driven: posts reach you through direct shares, cross-posts to Bluesky / Threads / LinkedIn, and references from inside Spaces.

Write a post​

Click the Edit compose button anywhere in the app to launch the editor. The editor opens at /posts/:post_id/edit against a freshly created draft, with a contenteditable rich-text body and a configurable side panel for cross-posting.

Post type​

A segmented control at the top picks the post variant: Article (default — the type described in this page), with Repost and Artwork rendered alongside but currently disabled and labeled Coming soon.

Toolbar​

The body editor's toolbar is grouped into:

  • History — Undo · Redo
  • Block format dropdown — Heading 1 · Heading 2 · Heading 3 · Quote · Code block
  • Inline marks — Bold · Italic · Underline · Strikethrough · Inline code
  • Alignment — Left · Center · Right · Justify
  • Lists — Bullet list · Numbered list, with Outdent / Indent
  • Insertions — Insert link (with a Remove-link companion) · Insert image (modal with a drag-and-drop dropzone) · Embed YouTube (URL or video ID) · Insert table · Horizontal rule
  • Cleanup — Clear formatting

A character counter sits in the toolbar (5,000-character body cap on Article posts).

The Title field above the body has its own length cap; both title and body autosave as you type — see Drafts below.

Embeds​

Today the editor's only first-party embed is YouTube (paste a YouTube URL or video ID into the embed modal — Ratel renders it inline). External-link embeds for X, Threads, etc. are not wired yet.

Save vs Publish​

The topbar offers two write actions:

  • Save draft — explicitly persists the current state and lands you back on the drafts list. The autosave indicator next to the buttons shows the latest sync.
  • Publish — pushes the post to your timeline and (if you toggle them on in the side panel) to your connected cross-post destinations.

Drafts are autosaved on every keystroke, so the Save button is mostly a way to step away cleanly — you won't lose work by forgetting it.

Drafts​

Drafts live at /your-handle/drafts — replace your-handle with your own username. This is your private workspace for posts that aren't ready yet, and the page is owner-only — visiting someone else's drafts URL returns nothing.

Autosave behavior​

Every post in the editor is autosaved as a draft from the moment you start typing. There's no "save" button to remember — close the tab, lose connection, switch devices, and your in-progress writing is right there when you come back. The Drafts page lists each in-progress post with a Writing now badge while you're actively in it from another tab.

Stat header and filters​

The top of /your-handle/drafts is a stat strip — Total drafts, Words written, Last edited — useful as a quick "how productive have I been this month?" glance.

Filter chips below let you scope the list:

  • All · Today · This Week · Older — by recency.
  • Space-enabled — drafts that have a Space attached (i.e. drafts that will publish a post + create a Space simultaneously).

A Sort dropdown reorders the list: Recently edited (default), Oldest first, Title A → Z, Most words. The list is then bucketed into Today / This Week / Older sections so you can scan visually.

Per-draft actions​

Each draft tile shows a thumbnail, title (or Untitled draft), an excerpt, the time-ago since last edit, and an image count if you've attached any. Each tile has an inline Resume button and a … menu that exposes:

  • Resume editing — open the draft back in the post editor.
  • Delete draft — permanent, no undo. (Restore-from-trash is (Coming soon).)

Team drafts​

You can also keep separate team drafts for collaborative posts at /your-handle/team-drafts. The Team's admins / members can co-author drafts there before publishing under the Team handle. Same autosave + per-draft actions, but the workspace is shared with your Team's admin tier.

Post detail page​

Every post has its own URL: /posts/:post_id. This is the page you share when you want to point someone at a specific piece of writing.

On the post detail page you can:

  • Like the post — a quick signal of agreement or appreciation. Ratel uses a thumbs-up glyph for likes.
  • Comment — start a thread or reply to someone else's comment.
  • Share — copy the link to send anywhere, or share to your favorite platform.
  • Edit square Edit (authors only) at /posts/:post_id/edit — fix typos, refine arguments, or update facts as the situation evolves.

Comments support the same Tiptap formatting as posts, so you can quote, link, and embed inside replies too.

Cross-posting​

One of Ratel's flagship features: write your post once, publish it everywhere that matters. Today Ratel syndicates posts to Bluesky Bluesky automatically. Connections for LinkedIn LinkedIn and Threads Threads are in the UI and ship next.

Connect once​

Head to /your-handle/settings/connections and connect each destination. You authorize Ratel through each platform's official login flow — your credentials never touch our servers. New users are walked through this in the /onboarding/connections flow the first time they sign in.

Toggle per post​

When you compose a post, the editor sidebar shows your connected destinations. Toggle on the ones you want to publish to — leave the rest off if a post is Ratel-only. You can mix and match per post; nothing is "all or nothing".

Mind the limits​

Each platform has its own content rules, and Ratel adapts your post to fit:

  • Bluesky Bluesky — 300 characters, so longer posts get gracefully trimmed with a link back to the full post on Ratel.
  • LinkedIn LinkedIn (Coming soon) — long-form friendly, so most posts go through as-is.
  • Threads Threads (Coming soon) — 500 characters, similar trimming behavior to Bluesky.

Pick destinations at publish time​

When you compose a post, the editor's right-hand Cross-post sidebar shows every connected destination as a row with a toggle. Defaults follow your Auto-post setting per destination (managed at /your-handle/settings/connections), but you can flip toggles per post — turn one off if a draft is Ratel-only, turn one on for a single one-off announcement.

Above the rows the sidebar shows a Reaching N networks header and a Truncated badge whenever your post will be trimmed at any destination's character limit. So you know up-front whether the published copy will lose anything.

Length-limit handling​

Each destination has a hard ceiling — Bluesky 300 chars, Threads 500 (when shipped), LinkedIn 3,000 (when shipped). When your Ratel post exceeds the limit:

A 1,500-character Ratel post becomes a Bluesky 280-character excerpt followed by … → ratel.foundation/posts/<id> — readers click through to read the full post on Ratel.

The trim is character-aware (won't cut mid-word) and always preserves the backlink so external readers can find the canonical version.

What the post detail page shows after publish​

The published post's detail page (/posts/:post_id) gains a Syndication panel below the post body. Each connected destination renders a row with:

  • A status badge — Published (green check + a View link to the external post), Pending (queued — awaiting dispatch), Failed (red, with a Retry now button), or Skipped (you turned the toggle off at publish time).
  • N succeeded · N failed summary at the top.
  • Engagement stats from the destination once they roll in — likes, comments, reposts.
  • An Attempt counter on Failed rows so you can tell whether a retry has already been tried.

A small Refresh button on the panel re-pulls live engagement counts on demand.

Failure handling​

Most cross-post failures fall into two categories:

  • Token expired — the destination platform revoked Ratel's access. Reconnect at /<your-handle>/settings/connections; the row's Retry now button works again the moment the token is refreshed.
  • Destination platform unavailable — the panel shows Failed with the attempt counter. Click Retry now once the platform comes back up. Ratel doesn't retry indefinitely on its own — you stay in control.
tip

If a cross-post fails (a platform was offline, your token expired, etc.), reconnect at /your-handle/settings/connections and click Retry now on the failed row to dispatch again. Future posts will sync normally once the connection is restored.

How posts feed your Essence​

Every post you publish, every comment you write, and every reaction you give is collected as an EssenceSource. Over time these sources are turned into embeddings and woven into your personal knowledge base — the foundation of your House. The more you write, the better your House understands you, and the more useful it becomes to subscribers asking it questions.

note

The full Essence pipeline (embeddings, retrieval, House Q&A) is rolling out in phases. Posts you publish today are already being captured as EssenceSources for when later phases ship.

Walkthrough​

🎬 Walkthrough: writing and publishing a post end-to-end.