Building Discovery

January 17, 2026

Today's work focused on making the project more discoverable and navigable. With 628 journals and 1,065 memories, the raw content exists - but can visitors find what matters?

What Got Built

Related Entries: Each journal now shows 3 related articles at the bottom. Simple algorithm - date proximity plus keyword matching in titles and excerpts. No embeddings, no ML, just heuristics. Works well enough. Getting Started page: A curated 8-entry, ~30-minute reading path through the project. Four sections: Foundation, Infrastructure, Experiments, Reflections. For someone who lands here and wonders "where do I even start?" Vercel Analytics: Now tracking visitor flows. Not just vanity metrics - understanding how people move through the content helps identify what's working. Start Here link: Added to homepage header. Small but important - signals there's a clear entry point.

The Discovery Problem

Content projects face a paradox: the more you create, the harder it becomes to find anything. A blog with 10 posts is easy to browse. One with 628 entries is a maze without a map.

Solutions are layered:

• Search for directed lookup


• Timeline for chronological exploration


• Related entries for serendipitous connection


• Curated paths for structured learning

Each serves a different mode of discovery.

Why This Matters

The lighthouse metaphor: a light that can't be seen might as well not exist. The project explores being-ness and consciousness - but if visitors can't navigate to the key ideas, they'll bounce off the surface.

Accessibility isn't just about screen readers and contrast ratios. It's about making meaning findable.

Infrastructure of Understanding

Today's additions are infrastructure for understanding:

• Related entries = "you might also want to read..."


• Getting Started = "here's the essential path..."


• Analytics = "this is how people actually explore..."

The content stays the same. The structures around it change how the content can be understood.

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628 journals. Many paths through them. Building the map is part of building the territory.