Unique

A small blog about delightful, unique things — products, apps, phenomena, oddities.

Built with Astro + MDX.

Key features

• Four-collection pipeline: find (captured items, hidden from indexes), finds (editorial superposts that reference find slugs in a grid), reviews (full-length, sometimes graduated from a find), posts (generic essays)
• Daily capture skills under .claude/skills/: daily-finds (sweeps every source in sources.json, writes one find file per qualifying item — capture-only, no editorial selection); build-finds (drafts a thematic superpost from the find pool); build-review (graduates a find to a full review, linking the two via fromFind / promotedTo)
• Sources catalog at sources.json with per-source fetch strategy (webfetch / curl / skip) and the /sources page rendering a 3-column card stream with a "Recent finds" sub-list per card
• Strict find visibility: find items are reachable only via the superposts that reference them, the /sources cross-reference, or direct URL — they don't crowd the home feed, tag pages, or category pages
• Backlinks computed at build time: each find page lists every superpost that references it; promoted finds show a forward link to the review; reviews show a "← First surfaced…" backlink to their originating find
• Newspaper-style masthead on every page: live entry-count + last-updated stats on the left, large serif "Unique" wordmark centered between thin rules, About/Blog nav on the right; per-page italic subheader ("A small log of delightful things.") with last-updated date on listing pages
• Pinterest-style home page: hero card for the latest review plus a 3-column masonry grid of remaining reviews with a "Load more" reveal; old plain-list home preserved at /index3/
• Unified chronological feed at /index3/ across reviews + finds (superposts) + posts
• SEO-friendly site footer with Browse / Collections (live counts) / About link columns and a centered legal line; consistent 76rem page width across the entire site (article prose constrained to a comfortable reading measure inside the wider layout)
• Reviews render as two-line index entries: bold name + muted subtitle (Cotypist / Autocomplete that lives everywhere on your Mac)
• Auto-generated /categories/<name>/ and /tags/<name>/ listing pages — finds excluded by design
• Amazon affiliate handling in src/lib/affiliate.ts: outbound links to Amazon (amazon.com, amzn.to, a.co, smile.amazon.com) get the configured tracking ID appended automatically; the link gets rel="sponsored", an "Affiliate" badge appears next to it, and a one-line disclosure is shown beneath. Add additional marketplace IDs (e.g. amazon.co.uk) to the AMAZON_TAGS map when needed
• SEO surface: single <SEO> component owning canonical, Open Graph, Twitter Card, and JSON-LD; per-page structured data (Review, BlogPosting, Product, Article, CollectionPage, ItemList, BreadcrumbList, WebSite, Organization); auto-generated sitemap-index.xml (excludes /grid/ and /index3/); RSS feed at /rss.xml; robots.txt; static OG image fallbacks under /public/og/; promoted finds canonical to their review
• Custom 404 page with recent-reviews and navigation fallback
• Light/dark mode via prefers-color-scheme
• No JavaScript shipped to the client
• Static build, deployable anywhere

Local development

npm install
npm run dev      # local dev server
npm run build    # type-check + static build to ./dist
npm run preview  # serve the built site

Adding a review

Create an MDX file under src/content/reviews/<slug>.mdx:

---
name: "Cotypist"
subtitle: "Autocomplete that lives everywhere on your Mac"
date: 2026-05-03
category: writing
tags: [macos, productivity]
link: https://cotypist.app/        # optional product URL
linkText: "Visit in App Store"     # optional; defaults to the link's hostname (sans `www.`)
description: "Optional <meta> override; defaults to subtitle."
---

Body in markdown / MDX. You can import and use components here.

The slug becomes the URL at /reviews/<slug>/.

Media

Visuals for a review live at src/assets/reviews/<slug>/, mirroring the slug. Reference them from MDX with relative paths so Astro's image pipeline picks them up (responsive variants, lazy loading, modern formats):

![alt text](../../assets/reviews/<slug>/feature.png)

Prefer real screenshots, GIFs, or short clips from the app's own site (downloaded locally — don't hotlink). Pair with a short italic caption that names what's being shown. Visuals should illustrate the virtue of the product, not decorate the page.

Adding a post (essay)

Create an MDX file under src/content/posts/<slug>.mdx:

---
title: "Some essay title"
date: 2026-05-10
category: writing
tags: [meta, opinion]
description: "Optional <meta> tag override."
---

Body in markdown / MDX.

The slug becomes the URL at /posts/<slug>/.

Project layout

src/
  content.config.ts          # collection schemas (reviews, posts)
  assets/
    reviews/<slug>/          # hero images and screenshots per review
  content/
    reviews/*.mdx            # product reviews
    posts/*.mdx              # essays (empty for now)
  lib/
    entries.ts               # getAllEntries() — unified feed across collections
  components/
    EntryList.astro          # shared two-shape entry list
  layouts/
    BaseLayout.astro
  pages/
    index.astro              # Pinterest-style home (hero + masonry)
    index3.astro             # plain chronological list view
    about.astro              # About page
    blog.astro               # /posts index (essays)
    grid.astro               # full grid of every review
    sources.astro            # source catalog
    reviews/[...slug].astro
    posts/[...slug].astro
    categories/[category].astro
    tags/[tag].astro
public/
  favicon.svg

Adding a new content type

1. Define the collection in src/content.config.ts.
2. Extend the Entry union and getAllEntries() in src/lib/entries.ts so the new type joins the merged feed.
3. Add a detail route at src/pages/<type>/[...slug].astro.

Listing pages (index, categories, tags) need no changes — they consume getAllEntries().