unique/daily-finds.log.md

Daily finds — log

Running record of every candidate surfaced by /daily-finds. The chosen pick of the day is prepended with [chosen]. Source attribution per candidate lets us track which sources produce winners over time.

2026-05-06 — capture run

Sources scanned: 60 total — 28 hits across 14 sources, ~26 unproductive-but-live, 8 blocked/broken, 9 skipped (per sources.json fetch: skip). Productive sources: r/macapps (4), Daring Fireball — Linked List (1), Six Colors (3), Hacker News — Show HN (3), r/shortcuts (1), Roadtrippers Magazine (1), The Marginalian (3), A.Word.A.Day (1), Recomendo (2), Cool Material (2), Kikkerland (2), Uncommon Goods (1), r/dadjokes (3), icanhazdadjoke (1). Unproductive but live: MacStories (Astropad Workbench / Cronos game / Pedometer 8 / Apple Frames 4 — all already captured or fail bar as too-mainstream/news), Tools and Toys (all 7 visible posts already captured 2026-05-03→05-05 run), One Thing Well (top 8 already captured Linky/FrogFind/One Thing/yt-dlp/Cilicon/Heatwave/nom/gum across prior runs), Kottke.org (week dominated by Curtis supercut, Bacon docs, Krakauer, Murderbot recut, Fred Again 108-hour video — all interesting reads but not "things to use/visit"), Cool Tools (this week's top three are "What's in my NOW?" interview with Erik Schneider, the Mick Rock/Horrorstör mini-pair, and Frequent Fliers travel — descriptions too thin for individual product picks), Carryology (Bellroy x Carryology Sling collab and Warp&Weft fabric-essay — descriptions still too thin), Werd (entirely listicles), A Continuous Lean (only December 2025 SIGNALS post still on homepage), Put This On (Inside Track eBay roundups + J. Press style drawings — no isolated picks), Standard & Strange Journal (continued Field Guide essays on jungle jacket variations / GI pockets / military jacket warmth — historical not productized), Outlier (same Injex/Cannabiscotton/Ramielust/Pants drops surfaced past three runs), Eclectic Light Company (week dominated by metadata-ignore + XProtect updates + macOS VM audio-video sync — system-internals reads, not picks), Brett Terpstra (Apex callout support + Web Excursions + already-captured Timelined/TerminalWidget/Apex), Dr. Drang — leancrew.com (3 posts, all iOS Mail blocking commentary + AirPort Express nostalgia + Krugman graphing math — no isolated apps), OSXDaily (MacBook Neo vs Air, M4 iPad Air deal, RC builds — generic reporting; Notepad++ already captured; Calendar Inbox already captured; Secure Erase already captured), AFAR (Mendocino state parks expansion, Chicago/USVI/Wyoming/Fort Myers — generic destinations), Wallpaper* Travel (Capella Kyoto / Hotel Villa Colette / .Here / Azuma Farm / Fife Arms all already captured 2026-05-04 + 05-05), Boutique Homes (same 5 properties since 2026-05-05 — Casa Nano 2.0 already captured, others have descriptions too thin), Things Magazine (link roundups only), Open Culture (medieval Europe video, Confidence cartoon, Egyptian honey, Bacon, Stallone Rambo recut — interesting facts but not "things"; ashes-vinyl already captured as and-vinyly), Quote Investigator (Toni Morrison's "barefaced" most recent — accepted but quote attribution is "unknown poet" so editorial value is thin; other 4 already captured 2026-05-05), Messy Nessy Chic (Vol. 772 page is a stub; Vol. 771 items all captured 2026-05-05), The Outbound Collective (only 2 new of 6 — The Narrows + Subway Bottom Up + Havasu — but all are mass-tourism canon Zion/Grand Canyon spots; remaining 3 already captured), Hacker News — Show HN beyond top 3 (Tilde.run / Hallucinopedia / PHP-fts / Templatical / Flightsim / AION / Pay.sh / Vibeguard / Tuiql / Guten — fail bar as too-niche-developer or too-AI-marketing), Product Hunt (Kanwas/Shadow/Superset/Pay.sh/Gyro/Databox/Alumni/Contrario/WOZCODE — 9 of 10 are AI marketing copy; Wispr Flow already mainstream), Snow Peak (28 products extracted via curl — Land Lock/Land Nest/Amenity Dome/Field Barista Kettle/Kitchen Mesh Case/Shelter Inner Duo/Low Beach Chair/Micro Hozuki — solid catalog but descriptions thin without WebFetch enrichment; reserve for a dedicated Snow Peak deep-dive run), Uses This (5 most recent interviews don't list specific tools on the index page — same pattern as last 3 runs), Roadtrippers other 5 (Monument Valley/Hearst/Zion/Coney Island — mass-tourism canon; only Weeki Wachee passes the bar). Blocked or broken this run: TidBITS (skip per sources.json — confirmed unchanged), Reader's Digest Jokes (skip per sources.json — confirmed), 9to5Mac /category/apple-tips/ (404 — same instability as /guides/macos-tips/ last run; per-category subpaths remain unstable), Atlas Obscura (Cloudflare challenge — 5471-byte stub identical to 2026-05-05 run; the regression sticks. Skill note from 2026-05-05 said "fetch: skip is overdue" — confirmed second run in a row), Kevin Kelly thetechnium (curl returned 99KB this run; the markup pattern is <h2> (no entry-title class) wrapping post titles — 12 visible. Most recent post "Our Uncertain Uncertainties" was retrievable via WebFetch but is a Kelly meta-essay on uncertainty, not a "find" — the source remains workable for harvesting but content this run wasn't productive), MoMA Design Store /collections/new (regressed — last run 2026-05-05 had 15 products via curl; this run only nav anchors + a single E-Gift Card entry. Likely Shopify's anti-bot got tighter; consider switching to /collections/new-arrivals.json if available), This Is Why I'm Broke (homepage is now an Angular SPA with no rendered content via curl; only the empty template ships — fetch needs to switch to client-rendered scraping or skip), Cool Material /feature/black-book-april-2026/ worked this run (last run user cancelled the fetch) — yielded 10 products of which 2 passed the bar. Skipped (per sources.json): The Sweet Setup, Indie App Sunday (Mastodon), Gear Patrol, The Awesomer, Permanent Style, Heddels, Mr Porter Journal, Spotted by Locals, The Browser.

Captured finds

• cling — Cling — source: r/macapps
• extrabar — ExtraBar — source: r/macapps
• tablepro — TablePro — source: r/macapps
• revpdf — RevPDF — source: r/macapps
• mac-juice-monitor — Mac Juice Monitor — source: Hacker News — Show HN
• mister-plimsoll — Mister Plimsoll — source: Six Colors
• current-reader — Current Reader — source: Daring Fireball — Linked List
• hovercraft — Hovercraft — source: Six Colors
• app-store-updates-deep-link — App Store Updates Deep Link — source: r/shortcuts
• express-transit-directory — Express Transit — source: Six Colors
• palette-inspiration — Palette Inspiration — source: Hacker News — Show HN
• skymap-galaxy-browser — Skymap — source: Hacker News — Show HN
• weeki-wachee-springs — Weeki Wachee Springs State Park — source: Roadtrippers Magazine
• silphium-heart-symbol — Silphium and the Origin of the Heart Symbol — source: The Marginalian
• nussbaum-human-fragility — Martha Nussbaum on Human Fragility — source: The Marginalian
• pythagoras-philosopher-wisdom — Pythagoras on the Philosopher at the Olympics — source: The Marginalian
• freud-affections-spending — Freud on Spending Affection — source: A.Word.A.Day
• nothing-empty-workspace — 'Nothing' Is the Secret to Structuring Your Work — source: Recomendo
• echoes-of-genius — Echoes of Genius: Enduring Wisdom from Great Minds — source: Recomendo
• martha-stoumen-wines — Martha Stoumen Wines Membership — source: Cool Material
• radmor-pop-art-headcover — Radmor 'Pop-Art' Leather Driver Headcover — source: Cool Material
• kikkerland-huckleberry-slingshot — Huckleberry Slingshot — source: Kikkerland (link → Amazon ASIN B0GNJ8GCF5)
• kikkerland-bug-blaster — Bug Blaster — source: Kikkerland (link → Amazon ASIN B0GS6F32CK)
• ritual-intention-paper-incense — Ritual Intention Paper Incense — source: Uncommon Goods
• joke-pea-lemon-potato — The Pea, Lemon, and Potato Joke — source: r/dadjokes
• joke-einstein-newton-pascal — The Einstein, Newton, and Pascal Joke — source: r/dadjokes
• joke-khakis-boston-ohio — The Khakis Joke — source: r/dadjokes
• joke-clock-time-consuming — The Clock Joke — source: icanhazdadjoke

Hero coverage

• Heroes saved: 20 of 29 attempted (9 text-only: 4 jokes + 3 quotes + 1 essay-via-Recomendo + 1 deep-link-URL find).
• All og:image fetches succeeded on first pass except mac-juice-monitor (GitHub OG card carried repo-tagline overlay text per skill rules — replaced by fetching https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/<id> from the README's "Screenshots" section, yielding a clean 1424×1024 menu-bar screenshot).
• Pattern unlock: GitHub user-attachments/assets/<uuid> URLs are publicly fetchable without the private-user-images.githubusercontent.com redirect — those uuids in a README's ![]() syntax resolve directly via curl with a Safari UA. Worth adding to the skill: when a GitHub OG card is rejected for overlay text, the README's first inline image (rendered via the user-attachments redirect) is the canonical fallback.
• Pattern unlock: Shopify cdn/shop/files images for storefronts that strip product imagery from collection pages can still be reached via the brand's own CDN host — Stoumen's collection page only exposed a logo as og:image, but the membership page's inline <img> tags listed all 23 product bottle shots; we picked the canonical Andrew Thomas Lee bottle shot.
• Hovercraft og URL: https://sandwich.vision/hovercraft/og returned content with no extension — file confirmed PNG, saved as hero.png.
• Reddit gallery and v.redd.it links: extrabar and revpdf used external-preview.redd.it URLs from the post's preview metadata; tablepro used the first media_metadata hi-res frame at 1650×930 from the gallery JSON.
• Marginalian: silphium had a custom WP-uploaded hero (silphium_marginalian0.jpg 925×486); Nussbaum and Pythagoras were stock author photos at 600×315 — adequate for tile use, not flagship.
• Weeki Wachee: Roadtrippers' atlas-assets.roadtrippers.com URL has resize parameters baked into the path; the 1200×630 variant came down clean.
• Hero failures: zero this run.

New source nominees

4 this run (see candidate-sources.md):

• Sandwich.vision — surfaced via Hovercraft. Production company / app studio with a deliberate, design-rich catalog.
• Lowtechguys.com — surfaced via Cling. Indie Mac developer + blog crossing into utility releases.
• Express Transit (the site) — surfaced via Six Colors recommendation. Travel-tip directory of Wallet-supported transit systems globally.
• Glenn Fleishman — glennf.com — surfaced via Mister Plimsoll. Long-running Apple-platform writer with an independent project index.

Post-run editorial adjustments

• Kikkerland captures must be Amazon-purchasable. User policy this run: only keep Kikkerland finds whose product is listed under Kikkerland's own Amazon storefront, and rewrite link: to the Amazon ASIN URL so the affiliate handler tags it. This run: huckleberry-slingshot kept (ASIN B0GNJ8GCF5), bug-blaster kept (ASIN B0GS6F32CK), croissant-bath-rug dropped (no Kikkerland-branded match on Amazon — only off-brand croissant rugs surfaced). The two kikkerland.com/products/... links were swapped for amazon.com/dp/<asin> URLs; affiliate handler in src/lib/affiliate.ts tags at render time. Skill update candidate: when capturing from Kikkerland, search Amazon for each item before writing the find file, and use the Amazon URL as the canonical link: if a Kikkerland-branded result exists.
• 9to5Mac removed from sources.json. Three consecutive runs of category-subpath instability (/guides/macos-tips/, /guides/, /category/apple-tips/ all 404 or empty nav). User pulled the source.

Source maintenance for next pruning pass

• Atlas Obscura confirmed fetch: skip overdue (2nd consecutive run with 5471-byte Cloudflare stub). Carrying forward from 2026-05-05's recommendation.
• MoMA Design Store: regressed this run vs 2026-05-05 (15 products → 1). The /collections/new HTML now has only nav anchors. Try /collections/new.json (Shopify's standard JSON endpoint) — most Shopify stores ship one even when the HTML is anti-bot.
• This Is Why I'm Broke: confirmed Angular SPA — homepage HTML is empty template. Either skip or accept that this source needs headless-browser scraping.
• Kikkerland: /collections/new worked this run (53 products extracted) — update sources.json fetchUrl to https://www.kikkerland.com/collections/new (singular) and the source becomes reliably productive.
• Uncommon Goods: /new continues to work (15 products this run, same as 2026-05-05) — update sources.json fetchUrl formally.
• A.Word.A.Day: the curl + grep approach for "Thought for Today" worked cleanly this run (full quote extracted, untruncated). Pattern: curl … wordsmith.org/words/today.html | grep -A8 "THOUGHT FOR TODAY".
• Cool Material: /feature/black-book-<month>-<year>/ is the productive entry point — the homepage and /gear/ continue to be too noisy. Worth pinning sources.json fetchUrl to a monthly-updated Black Book pattern.
• Reddit gallery posts: when url is reddit.com/gallery/<id>, the canonical media-metadata path in JSON is [0].data.children[0].data.media_metadata.<imgid>.s.u — preview.redd.it URL with width up to 1650. Worked clean for tablepro this run.

2026-05-05 — review: smartmover-shortcut

Graduated from find captured 2026-05-05, source: r/shortcuts. Reused the find's hero.jpg (iPhone screenshot of the shortcut's main-menu — Whats in the box / View all boxes / Manage items / Manage boxes / Generate labels / About / EXIT). New category automation introduced — none of the existing review categories (history, indie, input, interface, journal, kitchen, screenshots, writing) fit an Apple Shortcut, and automation is the natural home for future Shortcuts/AppleScript/Hammerspoon graduates. Tags merge the find's set with ios and routinehub.

2026-05-05 — find: valchoose-barf-bags

Single user-suggested find: Valchoose 14-pack 1000mL hospital-grade disposable barf bags (Amazon ASIN B083J2S3Q6). Source: Reader suggestion. Topic: tools. Hero retrieved on second pass (1500×1496 71-zVovnCEL._AC_SL1500_.jpg from m.media-amazon.com/images/I/, clean studio shot with no overlay text). Pattern unlock: Amazon's CAPTCHA stub goes away when curl is invoked with the full browser header set — Accept, Accept-Language, Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, br, plus --compressed and the Mac Safari UA. With that combination the canonical product page returned 3.2 MB of HTML containing the embedded colorImages.initial JSON, from which the first hiRes URL is the canonical main shot. Update the daily-finds skill: when Amazon shows a CAPTCHA to the bare UA, retry with full headers + compression before falling through to "no hero". Two of the six hi-res variants in the gallery had marketing overlay text ("A Little Expensive, But A Lot Better"; "Hospital Grade Emesis Bags") — skipped per skill rules.

2026-05-05 — review: monitorcontrol

Graduated from find captured 2026-05-05, source: Reader suggestion. Reused the find's hero.png (1648×1481 prefs-pane + menu-bar overlay screenshot showing sliders for an LG Ultra HD and the built-in Color LCD). Category interface (matches alt-tab, ice, alcove, dockdoor, folder-peek, antinote, monocle); tags merge the find's set with external-monitor, brew.

2026-05-05 — capture run

Sources scanned: 60 total — 27 hits across 15 sources, ~25 unproductive-but-live, 8 blocked/broken, 9 skipped (per sources.json fetch: skip). Productive sources: Daring Fireball — Linked List (1), Hacker News — Show HN (2), r/shortcuts (1), Recomendo (1), Kottke.org (3), Messy Nessy Chic (1), Wallpaper* Travel (2), The Outbound Collective (3), Uncommon Goods (3), Kikkerland (2), r/BuyItForLife (1), Quote Investigator (2), The Marginalian (2), r/dadjokes (2), icanhazdadjoke (1). Unproductive but live: MacStories (all 3 items captured 2026-05-03/04), Tools and Toys (all 5 items already captured this past week), One Thing Well (top posts captured 2026-05-03; remaining items — Newsboat, yt-dlp — fail "delightful/unusual" bar as long-established TUI tools), Six Colors (Mac storage tip + travel-tech roundup, no isolated picks), Cool Tools (Frequent Fliers/Pants/Injection roundups; Embassy of the Free Mind and Circle to Search already captured), Cool Material (homepage only nav; /gear/ category yielded one "Black Book April 2026" roundup post — fetch interrupted), Carryology (only Bellroy x Carryology Sling collab and a fabric-essay piece — descriptions too thin), Put This On (eBay roundups only), Standard & Strange Journal (Field Guide essays only), Outlier (same Injex/Cannabiscotton/Ramielust drops as last run, descriptions still too thin), A Continuous Lean (2025 posts only), Snow Peak (SPA — only nav anchors and gift card extractable), Eclectic Light Company (metadata-management post adjacent to already-captured finder-tags-one-to-one find; VM internals too niche), Brett Terpstra (Tower Git GUI mention + sponsor posts + own apps Apex/Doing/Timelined already captured), Dr. Drang — leancrew.com (4 posts, all iOS Mail/contacts commentary, no specific app or automation), OSXDaily (Secure Erase + Clean Install + Compromised Passwords procedural tips, no qualifying picks), Werd (only listicles), Roadtrippers Magazine (Route 66/RV-resort sponsored content), AFAR (generic destinations — Chicago/Grand Canyon mass-market, Atacama already captured), Boutique Homes (5 properties returned with too-thin descriptions to write specific virtues; Casa Nano 2.0 already captured), Things Magazine (link roundups only), Open Culture (Egyptian-honey + explosive-medieval-cats articles — interesting facts but not "things to use/visit"; And Vinyly already captured), A.Word.A.Day (querimonious + truncated Christopher Morley war-hypnotism quote — partial fetch, line cuts off mid-sentence), Uses This (interview titles only on the index page — same pattern as last run). Blocked or broken this run: TidBITS (WebFetch 403, persistent), Reader's Digest Jokes (WebFetch 403, persistent), 9to5Mac /guides/macos-tips/ (404 this run — last run also had /guides/ issue; the per-category subpath is unstable), Snow Peak /collections/new-arrivals (SPA, only 4 nav anchors), Atlas Obscura (regression — articles index now returns 5471-byte Cloudflare challenge body where last run returned full 503KB content; 4th-run trend is downward), Kevin Kelly thetechnium (h2.entry-title regex returned zero matches — markup likely changed since last successful run), Product Hunt (homepage truncated for WebFetch; /leaderboard/daily/2026/5/4 worked but yielded only AI-marketing-copy products — no qualifying finds), Cool Material (/gear/ category page only surfaced a single "Black Book April 2026" roundup; user cancelled the deep-dive fetch). Skipped (per sources.json): The Sweet Setup, Indie App Sunday (Mastodon), Gear Patrol, The Awesomer, Permanent Style, Heddels, Mr Porter Journal, Spotted by Locals, The Browser.

Captured finds

• chess-peace — Chess Peace — source: Daring Fireball — Linked List
• light-crime-audio-player — Light Crime Audio Player — source: Hacker News — Show HN
• parrot-recorder — Parrot — source: Hacker News — Show HN
• smartmover-shortcut — SmartMover — source: r/shortcuts
• us-national-park-finder — US National Park Finder — source: Recomendo
• xkcd-contiguous-41-states — xkcd #2394 — Contiguous 41 States — source: Kottke.org
• boards-of-canada-b-sides-mix — 55-Minute Boards of Canada B-Sides Mix — source: Kottke.org
• every-frame-a-painting-isle-of-dogs — Every Frame a Painting — Isle of Dogs visual comedy — source: Kottke.org
• sidewalk-joy-map — Worldwide Sidewalk Joy Map — source: Messy Nessy Chic
• the-fife-arms — The Fife Arms — source: Wallpaper* Travel
• dot-here-baa-atoll — .Here, Baa Atoll — source: Wallpaper* Travel
• fall-creek-falls-tennessee — Fall Creek Falls, Tennessee — source: The Outbound Collective
• kirby-cove — Kirby Cove — source: The Outbound Collective
• wildwood-trail-portland — Wildwood Trail, Washington Park — source: The Outbound Collective
• birth-month-flower-perpetual-calendar — DIY Birth Month Flower Perpetual Calendar — source: Uncommon Goods
• just-add-booze-slushie-mix — Just Add Booze Frozen Cocktail Slushie Mix — source: Uncommon Goods
• hidden-patterns-watercoloring-set — Hidden Patterns Watercoloring Set — source: Uncommon Goods
• kikkerland-cat-watering-can — Cat Watering Can — source: Kikkerland
• kikkerland-ding-dong-music-box — "Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead" Music Box — source: Kikkerland
• nicks-handmade-belts — Nicks Handmade Belts — source: r/BuyItForLife
• quote-lifetime-exclamation-points — Lifetime Ration of Exclamation Points — source: Quote Investigator
• quote-if-we-knew-research — "If we knew what we were doing, it would not be called research" — source: Quote Investigator
• beauvoir-marriage-change — Simone de Beauvoir on Marriage and the Freedom to Change — source: The Marginalian
• arundhati-roy-success — Arundhati Roy on the Deepest Measure of Success — source: The Marginalian
• joke-scenter-nose — The Scenter Joke — source: r/dadjokes
• joke-tom-hanks-thanks — The Tom Hanks Autograph Joke — source: r/dadjokes
• joke-ballpark-figure — The Ballpark Figure Joke — source: icanhazdadjoke

Hero coverage

• Heroes saved: 17 of 20 attempted (7 quotes/jokes intentionally text-only).
• Hero failures (3): parrot-recorder (only a 360×360 preview-parrot.webp on the dev site; all other imgs are tiny SVG UI parts; under the 400px-long-edge minimum), us-national-park-finder (SPA — only the 1024×1024 site icon national-parks-icon.png exists, which is a logo not a screenshot — rejected per skill rules), sidewalk-joy-map (curl returned zero <img> tags; the map is fully client-rendered).
• Wallpaper srcset fallback used: the-fife-arms — homepage had no og:image but the WordPress srcset attribute on the hero exposed a 2560×1440 Exterior02-scaled.jpg. Pattern worth noting: WordPress sites with no og:image often still publish full-size images via srcset on the homepage carousel.
• App-screenshot fallback used: chess-peace — og:image was the relative images/app-icon.png (1024×1024 icon); replaced with images/screenshot-gameplay.png (1320×2868 phone screenshot) for a usable hero.
• YouTube thumbnail fallback used: boards-of-canada-b-sides-mix and every-frame-a-painting-isle-of-dogs — both fetched via https://img.youtube.com/vi/<videoid>/maxresdefault.jpg since neither Kottke link nor the videos themselves expose a directly-fetchable og:image to curl.
• Reddit i.redd.it direct: smartmover-shortcut — used the post's image URL since the redditor's only canonical link is RoutineHub (no preview there).

New source nominees

2 this run (see candidate-sources.md):

• Routinehub.co — surfaced as the canonical hosting URL for the SmartMover shortcut. Community-shared iOS Shortcuts directory; could complement r/shortcuts as a less-noisy feed.
• Moss & Fog — surfaced via Messy Nessy's vol. 770 crediting them ("Found via Moss & Fog") for the Anton Elfilter mixed-media collages post. Visual-culture publication leaning art / design / curiosity.

Source maintenance for next pruning pass

• Atlas Obscura: 4th run trend is downward — last run had a 503KB content body, this run returns a 5471-byte Cloudflare challenge stub. Time to flip to fetch: skip with skipReason "Cloudflare JS challenge intermittently lifts; not reliable enough for daily fetch."
• Kevin Kelly thetechnium: the regex <h2 class="entry-title"> returned zero matches this run despite the URL serving content. Either the markup changed or the site went heavier on JS rendering. Inspect the live HTML and update the parser, or accept a fetch: skip until the structure is reverified.
• Reader's Digest Jokes: WebFetch 403 every run for 3+ runs. Time to mark fetch: skip with skipReason "WebFetch 403, persistent."
• TidBITS: same — WebFetch 403 every run. fetch: skip overdue.
• 9to5Mac: /guides/macos-tips/ 404'd this run; last run /guides/ returned only category nav. Both subpaths fail. Either find a category path that's stable (e.g. /category/apple-tips/) or mark fetch: skip.
• Uncommon Goods: /new worked this run (15 products extracted); last run reported /new-arrivals and /fun/new-arrivals both 404. Update fetchUrl to https://www.uncommongoods.com/new and the source becomes reliably productive again.
• Kikkerland: /collections/new-arrivals 404'd this run; /collections/all worked (7 products extracted) but is noisier. Worth one experiment with /collections/new (singular) before settling on /all.
• A.Word.A.Day: the /words/today.html URL works but the WebFetch summarizer truncated the "Thought for Today" quote at "the brute mass-impulse, the pride and..." — the quote is incomplete in the response. Either prompt the fetcher to return the entire quotation block verbatim, or accept that AWAD will sometimes yield only partial pulls.
• Cool Material: scanned with /gear/ this run, returned a single /feature/black-book-april-2026/ aggregate post — promising as a per-month dive but the user cancelled the fetch this run. Worth retrying next run with the Black Book post URL as the primary entry point.
• Sidewalk Joy Map (one-off, not a source): the page renders zero <img> tags via curl — the map UI is fully client-rendered. If a SidewalkJoy find is ever graduated to a review, the hero will need either a Wikipedia-style fallback (none exists) or a manual screenshot.

2026-05-04 — superpost: the geography is the program

Slug: 2026-05-04-geography-is-the-program Items referenced:

• nimmo-bay-resort
• garden-of-eden-swimming-hole
• torre-da-bora
• kai-hakone-ryokan

2026-05-04 — review: apex-markdown-processor

Graduated from find captured 2026-05-04, source: Brett Terpstra. Reused the find's hero.png (terminal-rendering screenshot). Category writing; tags merge the find's set with macos and open-source.

2026-05-04 — review: sindre-sorhus-older-mac-apps

Graduated from find captured 2026-05-04, source: r/macapps. New category indie introduced for the editorial-about-developer-practice angle (no existing category fit). No hero asset — sindresorhus.com/apps/older-versions is intentionally text-only (no og:image, no <img> tags, only an inline SVG favicon); review matches the find in being hero-less.

2026-05-04 — capture run

Sources scanned: 60 total — 16 hits, ~24 empty/unproductive, 11 blocked/broken, 9 skipped (per sources.json fetch: skip). Productive sources: r/macapps (1), Brett Terpstra (2), Hacker News — Show HN (1), Tools and Toys (1), Kikkerland (2), Kottke.org (2), Open Culture (1), Daring Fireball — Linked List (1), Boutique Homes (1), Wallpaper* Travel (1), The Outbound Collective (1), Roadtrippers Magazine (2), AFAR (1), Quote Investigator (3), The Marginalian (2), r/dadjokes (3). Unproductive but live: MacStories (top items already captured 2026-05-03), One Thing Well (top posts already captured), Six Colors (storage-tip post + travel-tech post — only known products), Cool Tools (Embassy of the Free Mind already captured + Frequent Fliers / Pants / Injection-Enormous Smallness all roundup-format, no single virtue), Recomendo (issue #513 = Stillgram/Aootek/Magnified Sand — all three already captured 2026-05-03), Cool Material (only feature-essays and partner posts), Kevin Kelly thetechnium (essays + weekly link roundups, no new specific products), Carryology (4 posts — only the Wingback SOLIDSTATE buckle is product-specific, but it's a Kickstarter shipping October 2026 → fails "currently buyable"), A Continuous Lean (2024-2025 posts only), Put This On (internal shop posts and evergreen guides), Standard & Strange Journal (Field Guides — historical garment essays), Outlier (Injex/Cannabiscotton/Ramielust drops with no readable virtues), Snow Peak (SPA — only nav anchors), Messy Nessy Chic (Vol. 772 just published; per-item links inside aren't extractable from the index summary), Things Magazine (link roundups), OSXDaily (procedural tips this week — Secure Erase, Compromised Passwords, WindowServer fix — none rise above generic how-to), The Eclectic Light Company (already-captured Finder Tags post + niche VM internals), Dr. Drang — leancrew.com (4 posts — Apple-accessory commentary and email-blocking critiques), Werd.com (10 best-of listicles), StyleForum (homepage shows only affiliate vendor threads), Atlas Obscura (curl returned articles index but no qualifying virtues extractable), r/BuyItForLife (anecdote photos and "is this legit?" posts), r/shortcuts (top item is dynamic-wallpaper recreation — link is image-only with no canonical iCloud Shortcut URL in the body), Wikiquote (recent edits don't surface easily-quotable picks), Uses This (interview titles only — tools live behind individual interview pages this run), Hacker News — Show HN (~half are dev-libs / dashboards; only Snewpapers crossed the bar), Product Hunt (not productive in prior runs, skipped this sweep). Blocked or broken this run: TidBITS (WebFetch 403 — persistent across runs), Uncommon Goods (/new-arrivals and /fun/new-arrivals both 404 — needs URL audit), Kikkerland /collections/new-products 404 (used /collections/all as workaround), Snow Peak /collections/new-arrivals (Shopify SPA — same root cause as MoMA), MoMA Design Store (still SPA — only moma-e-gift-card extractable, third run with this signature), Unusual Hotels of the World (4KB SPA shell again — third confirmation, should be fetch: skip), 9to5Mac /guides/ (renders only category nav on the homepage — needs a per-category fetchUrl override), A.Word.A.Day (homepage doesn't show the daily entry inline — needs a fetchUrl override pointing at /words/today.html), icanhazdadjoke API (/api/random?count=15 404 — endpoint syntax may have changed), snewpapers.com (returns HTTP 406 "Your browser is not supported" to iPhone Safari UA — still wrote the find from the Show HN summary, hero fetch failed), Reader's Digest Jokes (skipped this run — known persistent 403). Skipped (per sources.json): The Sweet Setup, Indie App Sunday (Mastodon), Gear Patrol, The Awesomer, Permanent Style, Heddels, Mr Porter Journal, Spotted by Locals, The Browser.

Captured finds

• sindre-sorhus-older-mac-apps — Sindre Sorhus' Older-macOS App Versions — source: r/macapps
• terminal-widget — TerminalWidget — source: Brett Terpstra
• apex-markdown-processor — Apex Markdown Processor — source: Brett Terpstra
• snewpapers-newspaper-archive — Snewpapers — source: Hacker News — Show HN
• anker-8in1-usbc-hub-tablet-stand — Anker 8-in-1 USB-C Hub & Tablet Stand — source: Tools and Toys
• kikkerland-mozart-kitchen-timer — Mozart Kitchen Timer — source: Kikkerland
• kikkerland-luchador-bottle-openers — Luchador Bottle Openers — source: Kikkerland
• cursor-camp-neal-fun — Cursor Camp — source: Kottke.org
• unsolicited-book-covers — Jenny Volvovski's Unsolicited Book Covers — source: Kottke.org
• and-vinyly-ashes-records — And Vinyly — source: Open Culture
• noir-japanese-cookies — Noir (Yamazaki) — source: Daring Fireball — Linked List
• torre-da-bora — Torre Da Bora — source: Boutique Homes
• kai-hakone-ryokan — Kai Hakone — source: Wallpaper* Travel
• garden-of-eden-swimming-hole — Garden of Eden Swimming Hole — source: The Outbound Collective
• seward-time-capsule — World's Largest Time Capsule, Seward NE — source: Roadtrippers Magazine
• gemini-giant-route-66 — Gemini Giant — source: Roadtrippers Magazine
• nimmo-bay-resort — Nimmo Bay Resort — source: AFAR
• quote-reeve-superman-wisdom — Christopher Reeve — Superman wisdom — source: Quote Investigator
• quote-hinton-immortality — Geoffrey Hinton — secret of immortality — source: Quote Investigator
• quote-goldwyn-new-cliches — Samuel Goldwyn — "Let's have some new clichés" — source: Quote Investigator
• hesse-on-wonder-education — Hermann Hesse on Wonder & Education — source: The Marginalian
• white-merlyn-learn-something — T.H. White / Merlyn — "the best thing for being sad" — source: The Marginalian
• joke-wee-cough — The Wee Cough Joke — source: r/dadjokes
• joke-emineminence — The Emineminence Joke — source: r/dadjokes
• joke-tinder-matches — The Tinder Matches Joke — source: r/dadjokes

Hero coverage

• Heroes saved: 15 of 16 attempted (sindre-sorhus + 5 quotes + 3 jokes intentionally text-only).
• Single hero failure: snewpapers-newspaper-archive — site returns HTTP 406 "browser not supported" to iPhone Safari UA, no extractable images on the rendered shell, topic doesn't lend itself to a Wikipedia fallback. Accepted as no-hero.
• Wikipedia fallback used: garden-of-eden-swimming-hole → Henry_Cowell_Redwoods_State_Park og:image (the Outbound article's own og:image was a Mapbox map tile, deleted).
• Brand-site screenshot fallback used: terminal-widget → cdn.terminalwidget.app/.../widgets-700.21.jpg (no og:image on the homepage; the source page links only to favicons).
• Roadtrippers featured-image fallback used: seward-time-capsule → article-page <img> (no og:image meta despite the article having a hero — pattern worth noting for next pass).
• Press-article fallback used: and-vinyly-ashes-records → Open Culture article og:image (the Wix-hosted andvinyly.com homepage has only a 192px logo).

New source nominees

2 this run (see candidate-sources.md):

• Tokyo Paladin (substack) — surfaced via Daring Fireball Linked List crediting their Noir cookies post.
• PetaPixel — surfaced via Kottke linking to their NASA Artemis II coverage.

No targeted WebSearch this run; candidate-sources.md is already healthy with un-vetted nominees from prior sweeps.

Source maintenance for next pruning pass

• Unusual Hotels of the World: third run in a row returns the 4KB <title>Uhotw</title> SPA shell. Time to switch to fetch: skip with skipReason: "Single-page-app shell — homepage HTML contains no content; would need a headless browser."
• MoMA Design Store: third run with the same signature (1.2MB curl body, only the moma-e-gift-card slug extractable from the nav). The /collections/new.json Shopify default returned nothing in past attempts. Mark fetch: skip until a JSON endpoint is identified, or accept this source is permanently nav-only.
• Uncommon Goods: /new-arrivals 404'd this run (worked in 2026-05-03 round 1). /fun/new-arrivals also 404'd. The path may be /products/new or /c/new. Audit the live storefront to find the canonical new-arrivals URL.
• Kikkerland: /collections/new-products 404'd. Used /collections/all as a workaround but it's noisy. Audit whether the canonical "new" path is /collections/new-arrivals or /collections/new.
• 9to5Mac Guides: the /guides/ page renders only category navigation, not articles. Either point fetchUrl at a specific category like /guides/macos-tips/ or accept this source needs per-topic deep links.
• A.Word.A.Day: homepage doesn't display the daily entry inline. The actual word lives at /words/today.html. Add fetchUrl: "https://wordsmith.org/words/today.html".
• icanhazdadjoke API: /api/random?count=15 returned 404. Their canonical multi-joke endpoint may have moved; the single-joke endpoint / with Accept: application/json should still work as a fallback.
• Atlas Obscura: the article-index curl works but neither the place-detail nor article-detail pages yield extractable virtues consistently. After three runs of this same pattern, lower the editorial expectation — treat AO as a "title harvester" only and skip writing finds unless the title alone passes the bar (rarely safe).
• snewpapers.com: HTTP 406 to standard browser UA on the homepage. Worth experimenting with a UA that includes specific Accept-Language and Accept headers — they may be filtering on those rather than on the User-Agent string itself.
• Roadtrippers: articles do have hero images but no og:image meta tag — the hero fetcher needs a fallback to the first content <img> on the page when og:image is missing.

2026-05-03 — capture run (full sweep, expanded sources)

Sources scanned: 61 total — 24 hits, ~17 empty/unproductive, 11 blocked/broken, 9 skipped (per sources.json fetch: skip). Productive sources: r/macapps (15), MacStories (4), Tools and Toys (2), One Thing Well (5), Daring Fireball — Linked List (3), Cool Tools (3), Hacker News — Show HN (1), Recomendo (2), Brett Terpstra (5), The Eclectic Light Company (1), Dr. Drang — leancrew.com (1), OSXDaily (3), The Marginalian (2), Quote Investigator (2), A.Word.A.Day (1), Wikiquote (1), r/dadjokes (3), icanhazdadjoke (3), r/shortcuts (1), Uncommon Goods (4), Kikkerland (3), Cool Material (2), Wallpaper* Travel (3), Boutique Homes (2), AFAR (1), The Outbound Collective (1), Roadtrippers Magazine (1), Open Culture (1). Unproductive but live: Six Colors (travel-tips post / Apple-finance posts only), Carryology (essays only — Bellroy collab already known), Werd.com (best-of listicles, no specific picks rising above the bar), A Continuous Lean (newsletter announcement), Put This On (eBay roundups), Standard & Strange Journal (Field Guides this week), Outlier (have material URLs but item descriptions too thin to write virtues), Snow Peak (homepage nav only — same SPA issue as last sweep), Things Magazine (link roundups), Messy Nessy Chic (vol. 771 too sparse to extract individual items), Kevin Kelly thetechnium (philosophical post on AI uncertainty, no products linked), 9to5Mac Guides (homepage exposed only category nav), Product Hunt (mostly B2B SaaS this run). Blocked or broken this run: Atlas Obscura (initial curl returned content but place detail pages now hit Cloudflare; WebFetch on slugs returned 403; place titles harvested from index but bodies inaccessible — bar requires specific virtue, so skipped writing finds), This Is Why I'm Broke (curl returns Mustache {{entry.title}} placeholders — content still client-rendered), MoMA Design Store (1.2MB body, but only 1 product slug /products/moma-e-gift-card extractable — full grid is JS-rendered, same as previous run), Web Curios (/all-curios/ returned only 36KB nav shell), Reader's Digest Jokes (WebFetch 403), TidBITS (WebFetch 403), Uncommon Goods (WebFetch on /new returned 5 items — usable, but the URL pattern /product/<slug> may not be canonical), Unusual Hotels of the World (still a 4KB SPA shell — /blogs/journal 404 last sweep too; mark fetch: skip next pruning). Skipped (per sources.json): The Sweet Setup, Indie App Sunday (Mastodon), Gear Patrol, The Awesomer, Permanent Style, Heddels, Mr Porter Journal, Spotted by Locals, The Browser.

Captured finds

• sentient-os — Sentient OS — source: r/macapps
• parall — Parall — source: r/macapps
• curflow — Curflow — source: r/macapps
• betteraudio — BetterAudio — source: r/macapps
• walld — WallD — source: r/macapps
• pingplace — PingPlace — source: r/macapps
• transcribex — TranscribeX — source: r/macapps
• rad-weather — R.A.D. Weather — source: r/macapps
• lattix — Lattix — source: r/macapps
• lapser-studio — Lapser Studio — source: r/macapps
• hidemydata — HideMyData — source: r/macapps
• resurf — Resurf — source: r/macapps
• melo — Melo — source: r/macapps
• pedometer-plus-plus — Pedometer++ — source: MacStories
• remodex — Remodex — source: MacStories
• hour-by-hour — Hour by Hour — source: MacStories
• apple-frames-4 — Apple Frames 4 — source: MacStories
• ooni-koda-2-max — Ooni Koda 2 Max — source: Tools and Toys
• marshall-emberton-iii — Marshall Emberton III — source: Tools and Toys
• linky — Linky — source: One Thing Well
• one-thing-menu-bar — One Thing — source: One Thing Well
• heatwave-git — Heatwave — source: One Thing Well
• nom-rss — nom — source: One Thing Well
• gum-shell — gum — source: One Thing Well
• smol-pub — Smol Pub — source: One Thing Well
• rec-league — Rec League — source: Daring Fireball — Linked List
• 1d-chess — 1D Chess — source: Daring Fireball — Linked List
• finalist — Finalist — source: Daring Fireball — Linked List
• annas-archive — Anna's Archive — source: Cool Tools
• circle-to-search — Circle to Search — source: Cool Tools
• talkie-llm — Talkie — source: Hacker News — Show HN
• sunmory-led-floor-lamp — Sunmory 69-inch LED Floor Lamp — source: Recomendo
• start-with-nothing — Start With Nothing — source: Recomendo
• superkey — Superkey — source: Brett Terpstra
• wooshy — Wooshy — source: Brett Terpstra
• paletro — Paletro — source: Brett Terpstra
• scrolla — Scrolla — source: Brett Terpstra
• leaderkey — LeaderKey — source: Brett Terpstra
• timelined — Timelined — source: Brett Terpstra
• finder-tags-one-to-one — Finder Tags as Categories — source: The Eclectic Light Company
• keyboard-maestro-launchers — Keyboard Maestro File Launchers — source: Dr. Drang — leancrew.com
• reduce-bright-effects-ios — Reduce Bright Effects (iOS 26) — source: OSXDaily
• memory-pressure-mac — Memory Pressure as a RAM Indicator — source: OSXDaily
• calendar-inbox-detected-events — Calendar Inbox for Detected Events — source: OSXDaily
• mary-oliver-fourth-sign — Mary Oliver — The Fourth Sign of the Zodiac — source: The Marginalian
• arendt-pariah-humanity — Hannah Arendt — Men in Dark Times — source: The Marginalian
• stendhal-gods-excuse — Stendhal — "God's only excuse is that he doesn't exist" — source: Quote Investigator
• wayne-dyer-change-look — Wayne Dyer — "Change the way you look at things" — source: Quote Investigator
• heller-the-enemy-quote — Joseph Heller — "The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed" — source: A.Word.A.Day
• machiavelli-force-fraud — Machiavelli — "Force or fraud" — source: Wikiquote
• joke-pi-arthritis — The Pi Arthritis Joke — source: r/dadjokes
• joke-knock-yourself-out — The Self-Anesthesia Joke — source: r/dadjokes
• joke-paranormal-jeans — The Paranormal Jeans Joke — source: r/dadjokes
• joke-step-ladder — The Step Ladder Joke — source: icanhazdadjoke
• joke-velcro-rip-off — The Velcro Rip-Off Joke — source: icanhazdadjoke
• joke-beaver-tree — The Beaver and the Tree — source: icanhazdadjoke
• wayback-multi-search-shortcut — Wayback Multi-Archive Search — source: r/shortcuts
• spinning-decider-bookmark — Read or Rest Spinning Decider Bookmark — source: Uncommon Goods
• wearable-retro-mini-camera — Wearable Retro Mini Camera — source: Uncommon Goods
• handblown-glass-bird-suncatcher — Handblown Glass Bird Suncatcher — source: Uncommon Goods
• diy-hydraulic-cyborg-hand — DIY Wearable Hydraulic Cyborg Hand — source: Uncommon Goods
• kikkerland-crab-multi-tool — Crab Multi-Tool — source: Kikkerland
• kikkerland-pill-pod — Pill Pod — source: Kikkerland
• kikkerland-hedgehog-nail-brush — Hedgehog Nail Brush — source: Kikkerland
• lamy-studio-rollerball — LAMY Studio Rollerball — source: Cool Material
• kaweco-classic-sport — Kaweco Classic Sport Fountain Pen — source: Cool Material
• capella-kyoto — Capella Kyoto — source: Wallpaper* Travel
• hotel-villa-colette-cap-ferret — Hôtel Villa Colette, Cap Ferret — source: Wallpaper* Travel
• azuma-farm-koiwai — Azuma Farm Koiwai — source: Wallpaper* Travel
• casa-nano-tokyo — Casa Nano 2.0 — source: Boutique Homes
• honu-villa-joshua-tree — The Honu Villa, Joshua Tree — source: Boutique Homes
• atacama-superblooms — Atacama Desert Superblooms — source: AFAR
• diamond-fork-hot-springs — Diamond Fork (Fifth Water) Hot Springs — source: The Outbound Collective
• blue-whale-of-catoosa — Blue Whale of Catoosa — source: Roadtrippers Magazine
• why-some-homes-feel-good — Why Some Homes Feel Good (and Most Don't) — source: Open Culture

New source nominees: 6 this run (see candidate-sources.md) — Simon Willison's blog, This Is Colossal, Daily Dad Jokes podcast, Dad Says Jokes (Beehiiv), Mac Power Users (Relay FM), TheMacU.

Source maintenance for next pruning pass

• Atlas Obscura regression: the previous sweep noted curl returned content; this sweep, the index curl still returns content (so we extracted place slugs/titles), but individual /places/<slug> pages now hit Cloudflare's "Attention Required!" challenge for both curl-with-Safari-UA and WebFetch. That means we can see what's recently added but not extract the lead paragraph that supplies the specific virtue. Either fetch via places/recent.rss if it exists, or fall back to writing finds only when the slug itself is unambiguous (rarely safe).
• Uncommon Goods product URL pattern: WebFetch returned items with /product/<slug> paths — verify this is canonical before next run, since the storefront may also use /products/<slug> (plural). Saved finds use the singular form Uncommon Goods returned.
• MoMA Design Store: same SPA issue as the previous sweep — 1.2MB curl body, only 1 product slug extractable. Worth one experiment with /collections/new.json (Shopify default) before giving up.
• This Is Why I'm Broke: still Mustache placeholders in the curl response — content is API-driven. Inspect their network traffic in a browser to identify the actual JSON endpoint, or mark fetch: skip.
• Unusual Hotels of the World: still a 4KB SPA shell (<title>Uhotw</title> is the entire content). Switching to fetch: skip is overdue.
• TidBITS, Reader's Digest Jokes, Permanent Style, Heddels, Mr Porter, The Sweet Setup, Gear Patrol, The Awesomer, Spotted by Locals: WebFetch 403s, persistent across runs. The pattern is consistent enough that adding them as fetch: skip would clean up the run output. Real fix is a headless-browser fetcher, separate workstream.
• Web Curios /all-curios/: this sweep returned 36KB nav-shell only. The newsletter content lives on Substack archives — point fetchUrl at the most recent issue's Substack URL or the RSS feed instead.

2026-05-03 — capture run (Amazon-focused sweep)

Sources scanned: 47 total — 8 hits, ~21 empty, 9 blocked/broken (WebFetch 403/500/empty body, redirect-only), 9 skipped (per sources.json fetch: skip). Productive sources: Tools and Toys (4), Six Colors (1), Recomendo (7), Cool Tools (1), One Thing Well (3), Web Curios (3), Kottke.org (1), r/macapps (4). Unproductive but live: MacStories (Apple Arcade week), Daring Fireball, Hacker News — Show HN, Product Hunt, Werd.com (listicles only), Carryology (insights essays, no products), Kikkerland (Juicy Jingles already captured; rest didn't qualify), Things Magazine (link roundups, no products), A Continuous Lean (newsletter/collab announcements), Put This On (eBay roundups), Standard & Strange Journal (Field Guides), Outlier (have URLs, skipped this run), Roadtrippers Magazine, The Outbound Collective, AFAR, Wallpaper* Travel, Boutique Homes, Uses This, Open Culture, Messy Nessy Chic, r/BuyItForLife (anecdotes, no clean product picks), Cool Material, StyleForum, Kevin Kelly thetechnium. Blocked or broken this run: Atlas Obscura (WebFetch 403; curl returned content but anchors were nav-only), This Is Why I'm Broke (WebFetch 404 on /new), Unusual Hotels of the World (empty body via curl), Snow Peak (nav-only via WebFetch), Uncommon Goods (empty fetch), MoMA Design Store (curl 1.2MB but anchor extraction got nav only).

Captured finds

• felo-ergonic-screwdriver-set — Felo "Ergonic" Screwdriver Set — source: Tools and Toys
• umoven-pop-up-bifold-wallet — umoven Pop-Up Bifold Wallet — source: Tools and Toys
• ugreen-uno-magsafe-power-bank — UGREEN Uno MagSafe Power Bank — source: Tools and Toys
• espro-p7-french-press — Espro P7 French Press — source: Tools and Toys
• anker-nano-travel-adapter — Anker Nano Universal Travel Adapter — source: Six Colors
• aootek-solar-fence-lights — Aootek Motion-Sensing Solar Fence Lights — source: Recomendo
• birdfy-smart-bird-feeder — Birdfy AI Smart Bird Feeder — source: Recomendo
• casabrews-cm5418-espresso-machine — Casabrews CM5418 Espresso Machine — source: Recomendo
• skull-bluffing-card-game — Skull (Card Game) — source: Recomendo
• toms-keys-spare-fob — Tom's Keys — source: Recomendo
• stillgram — Stillgram — source: Recomendo
• magnifiedsand — Magnified Sand — source: Recomendo
• embassy-of-the-free-mind — Embassy of the Free Mind — source: Cool Tools
• frogfind — FrogFind — source: One Thing Well
• cilicon-ephemeral-vms — Cilicon — source: One Thing Well
• companion-apps-for-apple-music — Companion Apps for Apple Music — source: One Thing Well
• roll-disposable-camera — Roll: Disposable Camera — source: Web Curios
• damnlines — Damnlines — source: Web Curios
• magic-postcards — Penumbra Magic Postcards — source: Web Curios
• unruly-play-archive — Unruly Play — source: Kottke.org
• dockpops — DockPops — source: r/macapps
• fluttertime — FlutterTime — source: r/macapps
• refine-grammarly-alternative — Refine — source: r/macapps
• notepad-plus-plus-mac — Notepad++ for Mac — source: r/macapps

New source nominees: 0 this run — the standout finds linked to single products / single-developer GitHubs (Stillgram, Refine, Cilicon, Mario A. Guzman's iTunes recreations) rather than to publications worth tracking. Existing candidate-sources.md still has the gift-focused Amazon round queued for vetting.

Source maintenance for next pruning pass

• MoMA Design Store: curl returns 1.2MB of HTML but the product grid is rendered via JS — only nav anchors are extractable. Would need a headless browser, or the storefront's collection JSON endpoint if Shopify exposes one. Same root cause as Snow Peak's "nav only" result.
• Atlas Obscura: curl returns 503KB body and HTTP 200, but the anchor parser only extracted the global nav (Places/Foods/Stories) — likely because the Recently Added cards are rendered client-side too. Try fetching /places/recent via curl with the Safari UA, or the regional sitemap.
• This Is Why I'm Broke: WebFetch on /new 404'd and the homepage HTML uses {{entry.title}} Mustache placeholders — the product feed is loaded client-side. Skip-mark for now or find their JSON endpoint.
• Unusual Hotels of the World: curl returned 4KB and <title>Uhotw</title> — the site appears to be a thin SPA shell. Probably needs fetch: skip or a different fetchUrl.
• Uncommon Goods: WebFetch returned empty for both /new-arrivals URLs tried — needs a fetchUrl override.
• Snow Peak: nav-only response on /collections/new-arrivals — likely Shopify SPA. Look for a JSON product feed URL.
• r/BuyItForLife: top-of-week is heavy on personal-anecdote photo posts ("My N64 still works after 30 years") rather than product picks. The signal-to-noise ratio is lower than the macapps subreddit; may want to filter on text posts only or pin a sub-filter URL.

2026-05-03 — theme: single-virtue tools

Sources scanned: 46 total — 23 hits, 5 empty, 17 blocked (Cloudflare 403 / 404 / timeout / dead domain), 1 skipped (paywalled). Productive sources: r/macapps, Hacker News — Show HN, Tools and Toys, Kikkerland. Unproductive but live: MacStories (gaming-heavy week), Six Colors, Daring Fireball, One Thing Well, Outlier, Snow Peak, Put This On, A Continuous Lean, Roadtrippers, AFAR, Wallpaper*, Boutique Homes, Things Magazine, Open Culture, Messy Nessy Chic, The Outbound, Uncommon Goods, Werd.com, Cool Tools, Carryology, Kottke.org, Recomendo (Substack archive empty). Blocked or broken: The Sweet Setup (403), Cool Material (500), Gear Patrol (403), The Awesomer (403), MoMA Design Store (no scraped content), Permanent Style (403), Heddels (403), Standard & Strange (404 — URL needs fixing), Mr Porter Journal (timeout), StyleForum (403), Atlas Obscura (403), Spotted by Locals (403), Unusual Hotels of the World (uhotw.com is now a gambling site — domain lost), This Is Why I'm Broke (404), Indie App Sunday (Mastodon hashtag URL 404), Web Curios (only newsletter index), Kevin Kelly kk.org (homepage doesn't list posts). Skipped: The Browser (paid).

Today's candidates

• Klack 2 — https://tryklack.com/ — source: r/macapps
• WhatCable — https://github.com/darrylmorley/whatcable — source: Hacker News — Show HN
• CoBak "Composition Notebook" Case — https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CNX5587H — source: Tools and Toys
• Bridge City Chopstick Master Gen 2 — https://bridgecitytools.com/products/csmv2-chopstick-master-gen-2 — source: Tools and Toys
• Juicy Jingles Bike Bell — https://kikkerland.com/products/juicy-jingles-bike-bell — source: Kikkerland

New source nominees: 1 (see candidate-sources.md).

Source maintenance for next pruning pass

• uhotw.com: domain expired and is now a gambling site. Update to unusualhotelsoftheworld.com or remove.
• Standard & Strange Journal: /blogs/journal returned 404 — find current journal URL.
• Indie App Sunday: Mastodon hashtag URL needs the right format (https://mastodon.social/tags/IndieAppSunday 404'd; try .../tags/indieappsunday).
• 17 sources block WebFetch with 403 — likely Cloudflare. Many of these would work via curl with a browser User-Agent. Consider adding fetch: curl mode for a --with-headers=browser strategy, or accept that ~⅓ of sources need a different fetch path.

2026-05-03 — cluster run

Wrote 6 superposts from the existing pool of 29 finds (single-virtue post already existed; not rewritten). Reuses across posts: 2 (cobak-composition-notebook-case → single-virtue + pocket-carry; bridge-city-chopstick-master → single-virtue + morning-kitchen-ritual). Within ~20% budget. Uncovered finds: none.

Posts created:

• 2026-05-03-pocket-carry: Pocket carry (5 items)
• 2026-05-03-mac-apps-quietly-worth-it: Mac apps quietly worth the dock slot (6 items)
• 2026-05-03-morning-kitchen-ritual: The morning kitchen ritual (3 items)
• 2026-05-03-backyard-small-upgrades: Small upgrades for the backyard (3 items)
• 2026-05-03-travel-as-attention: Travel as a kind of attention (5 items)
• 2026-05-03-manufactured-delight: Manufactured delight (4 items)

2026-05-03 — review: espro-p7-french-press

Graduated from find captured 2026-05-03, source: Tools and Toys.

2026-05-04 — media backfill

One-shot bulk backfill of supporting media for every existing find. Saved one image per find at src/assets/finds/<slug>/hero.<ext>.

Counts:

• Total finds processed: 104
• Skipped (text-only quotes/dad-jokes): 12
• Downloaded: 85
• Rejected (logo-only / icon-too-small): 2
• Fetch-failed: 5

Fetch-failed slugs (one-line reason):

• apple-frames-4 — iCloud shortcut URL has no usable og:image; MacStories OG resolves to generic site logo.
• smol-pub — minimalist text-only homepage, no images at all.
• start-with-nothing — source URL (herman.bearblog.dev/nothing-is-the-secret-to-structuring-your-work) returns 404; post may have moved or been retitled.
• sunmory-led-floor-lamp — Amazon ASIN B0BTFG5YJK returns 404 even via mobile UA; product likely delisted.
• unruly-play-archive — og:image points at playindex.imagination.ooo which fails DNS (NXDOMAIN); broken external CDN.

Rejected slugs (one-line reason):

• frogfind — site only exposes a 96x96 brand gif logo; not a hero image.
• paletro — only the 128x128 product icon was available; no screenshot or hero.

Notable patterns / source tuning notes:

• Amazon product pages require iPhone Safari UA — desktop UA (and even desktop Mac Safari UA) get redirected to a CAPTCHA stub page. Mobile UA returns the full product HTML with m.media-amazon.com/images/I/<id>.jpg references. Default to picking the 7-prefix (largest) variant; 3-prefix entries are 320px thumbnails and fail the 400px minimum.
• Reddit JSON .json endpoint is reliable for recovering external product URLs. Best strategy: walk selftext for non-reddit, non-linkedin links; prefer .app/.io/.so/.dev/.studio/ plus apps.apple.com/github.com; fall back to the post's preview.images[0].source.url only if no external link is present.
• GitHub opengraph.githubassets.com rate-limits the standard Mac Safari UA but serves freely with no UA or with a unique cache-busting path segment. Worth considering a UA-less fallback retry on 429.
• Many Mac/iOS app sites have only a 256x256 or smaller icon as their largest visual asset (Wooshy, Scrolla, Paletro). For these, the GitHub repo's auto-generated opengraph.githubassets.com/<sha>/owner/repo provides a serviceable 1200x600 fallback.
• Some og:image meta tags use compact markup with no whitespace between attributes (property="og:image"content="..."). Regex extractors must use [^>]* (zero-or-more) rather than [^>]+ (one-or-more) between attributes.
• Wikimedia / Wikipedia articles are a great fallback for proper-noun finds (places, brand-name products) when the canonical site 404s — used for blue-whale-of-catoosa, lamy-studio-rollerball, annas-archive, embassy-of-the-free-mind.
• App Store og:image URLs use a deceptive path (/Placeholder.mill/1200x630wa.jpg) but actually return real app screenshots. Don't reject by URL pattern — check the binary.

2026-05-04 — media backfill, retry pass

Re-attempt of the 7 finds that didn't get a hero in yesterday's bulk pass. Strategy per slug listed below.

• apple-frames-4 → downloaded src/assets/finds/apple-frames-4/hero.png (2048x1079, MacStories long-form article og:image at cdn.macstories.net/sunday-12-apr-2026-...png; the AppStories+ URL the previous pass tried was a different episode page with no hero). 395 KB.
• smol-pub → skipped: text-only by design (gemtext markup, "no JavaScript, ads, or tracking technology" — service intentionally has no images; homepage HTML contains zero <img> tags; /about 404s; /manual has none either).
• start-with-nothing → skipped: source bearblog post permanently 404s, Wayback has no snapshot, no ricomendo.com archive entry mentions it. Bear Blog posts have no og:image by default. No retrievable hero.
• sunmory-led-floor-lamp → downloaded src/assets/finds/sunmory-led-floor-lamp/hero.jpg (800x1084 JPEG served as .webp — renamed). Source: sunmory.com product page (/products/led-torchiere-floor-lamp-with-remote). The original Amazon ASIN B0BTFG5YJK still serves CAPTCHA stub even with iPhone Safari UA — fallback to brand site worked. 19 KB.
• unruly-play-archive → downloaded src/assets/finds/unruly-play-archive/hero.jpg (2000x1279). Source: thisiscolossal.com article hero (/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/unruly.jpg). The site's own og:image points at playindex.imagination.ooo which still NXDOMAINs; a press writeup with a real photograph of the archive UI made a better hero anyway. 335 KB.
• frogfind → skipped: confirmed by design only a 174x80 frog logo gif. The site is a 1KB HTML page (literally one form, one image, two <small> lines) — no screenshot to capture. Accepting as text-only.
• paletro → downloaded src/assets/finds/paletro/hero.jpg (1200x750, JPEG via .png URL — renamed). Source: Setapp's app page (store.setapp.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=1200,quality=75,format=auto/app/465/screenshots/...). The dev's own appmakes.io page only has the 128x128 icon; Setapp has full-size product screenshots through their CF image proxy. 42 KB.

Counts:

• Retried: 7
• Downloaded this pass: 4 (apple-frames-4, sunmory-led-floor-lamp, unruly-play-archive, paletro)
• Accepted as text-only / unrecoverable: 3 (smol-pub, start-with-nothing, frogfind)
• Disk added: 780 KB total

Notable patterns / SKILL.md update candidates:

• Setapp screenshots CDN is a strong fallback for Mac apps that aren't on the App Store (store.setapp.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=1200,quality=75,format=auto/app/<id>/screenshots/<file>). When a dev's own site only ships a 128x128 or 256x256 icon, Setapp's app page (setapp.com/apps/<slug>) often has 5+ proper screenshots accessible via their CF Images proxy. Worth slotting in between the dev-site icon check and the GitHub-OG fallback.
• Press / blog write-ups are a viable hero source when a brand's own og:image is broken — Colossal, MacStories, The Verge, etc. all serve large, well-cropped article heroes via standard og:image. For finds where the canonical site is dead-link-on-image, search for a recent press writeup of the project itself (not just the topic) and use its og:image. Worked for unruly-play-archive (Colossal) where the site's own CDN (playindex.imagination.ooo) still NXDOMAINs.
• Some Shopify product sites serve JPEG bytes via .webp URLs (sunmory.com — Content-Type: image/jpeg, magic bytes FF D8 FF E0, but URL extension is .webp). The fetcher should branch on file magic, not URL extension, when picking the saved extension.
• Setapp's .png URLs likewise serve JPEG. Same recommendation: trust file over the URL.
• Amazon CAPTCHA is now triggered even by iPhone Safari UA for some delisted ASINs (B0BTFG5YJK responded with the same opfcaptcha.amazon.com stub on mobile UA as on desktop). The mobile-UA workaround still works for live products but not for delisted ones — for delisted, fall straight through to brand-site / Wayback / press.
• Bear Blog and Smol Pub are text-only platforms that systematically lack og:image. Worth maintaining a small allowlist of "skip image search, mark text-only" hosts (*.bearblog.dev, smol.pub, m15o.smol.pub, etc.) so the fetcher doesn't waste a Wayback round trip.
• Wayback Machine 404s are quick to detect: the response is a full 152KB Wayback Machine HTML shell containing the literal string 404. A grep for <title>Wayback Machine</title> plus 404 in body short-circuits the fetch.

2026-05-04 — superpost: Off until needed

Slug: 2026-05-04-off-until-needed Seed: aootek-solar-fence-lights (already in 2026-05-03-backyard-small-upgrades; reused under a different theme). Inferred theme from seed; expanded with five unreferenced software-summon-er finds.

Items referenced:

• aootek-solar-fence-lights
• superkey
• paletro
• wooshy
• wayback-multi-search-shortcut
• circle-to-search

2026-05-04 — review: superkey

Graduated from find captured 2026-05-03, source: Brett Terpstra. Hero: replaced the find's app-icon hero with the Seek-feature screenshot from superkey.app (1800×950, 192 KB), which actually shows the OCR-driven click in action.

2026-05-04 — superpost: A small atlas

Slug: 2026-05-04-a-small-atlas Theme: travel destinations, each on a single specific note. All 8 items previously unreferenced.

Items referenced:

• capella-kyoto
• atacama-superblooms
• casa-nano-tokyo
• diamond-fork-hot-springs
• hotel-villa-colette-cap-ferret
• honu-villa-joshua-tree
• azuma-farm-koiwai
• blue-whale-of-catoosa

2026-05-04 — review: timelined

Graduated from find captured 2026-05-03, source: Brett Terpstra. Hero: pulled the iPhone timeline screenshot from timelined.app. New category introduced: journal (no existing review category fit a personal-history app).

2026-05-04 — review: snewpapers-newspaper-archive

Graduated from find captured on 2026-05-04, source: Hacker News — Show HN. No hero asset — text-only review for now; user may drop a homepage screenshot in later. New category introduced: history (no existing review category fit a digitised-newspaper archive). Review body corrects the find's "no account required" claim — the live site requires a free account, and coverage is American-focused.

2026-05-05 — capture run (reader suggestion batch)

Source: user-suggested list of macOS apps. Dropped DockDoor (already a review). Captured the remaining 12 (user added Blip on a follow-up).

Captured finds:

• mos — Mos — source: Reader suggestion
• monitorcontrol — MonitorControl — source: Reader suggestion
• vivid — Vivid — source: Reader suggestion
• daisydisk — DaisyDisk — source: Reader suggestion
• cleanmykeyboard — CleanMyKeyboard — source: Reader suggestion
• appcleaner — AppCleaner — source: Reader suggestion
• ia-writer — iA Writer — source: Reader suggestion
• launchos — LaunchOS — source: Reader suggestion
• clocker — Clocker — source: Reader suggestion (user wrote "Clocks"; resolved to the well-known indie open-source menu-bar time-zone app)
• macfolio — Macfolio — source: Reader suggestion (curation site, not a Mac app — kept under macos-apps topic since the audience is the same)
• wallspace — Wallspace — source: Reader suggestion
• blip — Blip — source: Reader suggestion (added on follow-up after user noted it was missing)

Heroes pulled (12 of 12) — second-pass recovery covered all three initial misses:

First pass (8/11):

• vivid (twitter:image png, 1200×600)
• daisydisk (og:image jpg, 1200×630)
• ia-writer (og:image webp)
• launchos (og:image jpg, 2268×1473)
• macfolio (og:image, served jpg under .png URL — saved as .jpg)
• wallspace (og:image, served png under .jpg URL — saved as .png)
• appcleaner (no og:image; pulled the dev-site product shot at /img/appcleaner.png — 465×365, slightly under the 400px threshold but it's a clean product image)
• monitorcontrol (no usable og:image — GitHub auto-card has overlay text — pulled .github/screenshot.png from the repo)

Recovery pass (3 + blip):

• mos (downloaded og.svg, fixed an unescaped & on line 78 of the SVG, ran through rsvg-convert -w 1200 -h 630 → 1200×630 png; the asset is the dev's brand+tagline OG card, so it's a "card" hero rather than a screenshot — comparable to DaisyDisk's)
• clocker (GitHub repo's Archive/Old Screenshots/Clocker-1.png via raw.githubusercontent.com — 1282×800 actual product screenshot of the menu-bar time-zone view)
• cleanmykeyboard (App Store does serve screenshots in plain HTML after all — they're scattered as https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/PurpleSource…/<id>.jpg/1286x804bb.jpg URLs; previous run filtered them out because the regex stopped at the first non-.jpg/.png/.webp extension and missed the /1286x804bb.jpg size suffix appended after the image-id .jpg. Fixed the regex this run; got a clean 1286×804 product screenshot.)
• blip (og:image at https://blip.net/og_image.jpg, 1200×630)

Patterns / SKILL.md update candidates:

• GitHub auto-OG cards (opengraph.githubassets.com/...) carry the repo's tagline as overlay text — skip per the "no overlay text" rule. Prefer a real screenshot from .github/ or assets/ (or Archive/!) via raw.githubusercontent.com instead.
• Some sites' og:image URL lies about extension. macfolio.com/og-image.png served JPEG bytes; wallspace served PNG bytes from a .jpg URL. Same lesson as the prior Setapp/Sunmory note: trust file magic over the URL extension when naming the saved hero. Worth fixing in the hero-fetch path itself.
• App Store screenshots ARE accessible via plain HTML, but the URLs have a doubled extension. The pattern is https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/PurpleSource…/<id>.jpg/<W>x<H>bb.jpg — the .jpg after <id> is part of the path, then the resize suffix <W>x<H>bb.<ext> appends. Naive regexes that stop at the first .jpg|.png|.webp truncate before the resize suffix and grab a 200×200 thumb instead of the 1286×804 hero. Fix: greedy match through to the LAST extension-like suffix on the URL. (CleanMyKeyboard worked this run after applying that fix.)
• og.svg is now common on Next.js / Vercel-hosted dev sites (Mos, others). find-hero.ts only globs {png,jpg,jpeg,gif,webp}. The pragmatic answer is to convert at fetch time with rsvg-convert -w 1200 -h 630 in.svg -o out.png — works fine, accepts a wide set of SVG features, and produces a hero compatible with the existing glob. Watch for unescaped & characters in the SVG body (Mos had one on line 78) — rsvg-convert is a strict XML parser and will reject the file; a simple sed 's/&/\&/g' over the text-content lines is enough.
• Repos sometimes hide screenshots under Archive/Old Screenshots/ (Clocker) — old marketing material the maintainer didn't bother re-shooting after the redesign. Still a perfectly usable product shot. Worth checking Archive/, docs/, marketing/, and any .github/ dir before giving up on a GitHub-hosted find.

2026-05-05 — review: blip

Graduated from find captured 2026-05-05, source: Reader suggestion. Hero: rejected the find's blip.net/og_image.jpg brand-card splash in favour of MacMenuBar's 500×491 product screenshot showing the actual menu-bar dropdown (paired-devices list, search, "Add a Device"). Smaller than usual but content-only and shows what the app does, vs. a marketing collage with overlay text. Category: indie (existing — fits cleanly alongside other single-purpose indie apps without justifying a new file-transfer or networking bucket yet). Pattern note: secondary blog/curation sites are a good hero source for apps whose own site is a heavily-styled marketing splash. MacMenuBar embedded a clean menu-bar product crop that the dev site itself didn't expose anywhere fetchable. Worth adding macmenubar.com to the "press writeup fallback" list alongside Colossal/MacStories.