Jant
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Writing and organizing

Jant's publishing model has just one primitive: the post. A post comes in one of three formats (Note, Link, Quote), can carry attachments, and can carry a rating. If a few posts were written as a continuous train of thought, you can string them into a Thread. If a few posts share a topic, you can group them into a Collection. Everything else is an extension of those two ideas.

Post formats

Note

Use Note when the body of the post is your own writing. Journal entries, essays, status updates, quick thoughts — all Notes.

The title is optional. If you give a Note a title, Jant uses it to generate the URL slug; otherwise it generates a short random one.

Link

Use Link when you're sharing someone else's content along with your own take. Examples: a blog post a friend wrote, a fun tool you just discovered, a podcast episode worth listening to, a good article you read.

The URL is required. You'll need to fill in a title, and you can add your own commentary.

Quote

Use Quote when you're citing someone else's words. Examples: a passage from a book, a sentence in an article that made you stop, a line from a film.

The quoted text is required; the author and source link are both optional. Quotes are typeset in their own dedicated style.

Attachments

A post can carry attachments, and you can drag to reorder them. Two kinds:

  • Media attachments: images, video, audio, and documents like PDFs.
  • Text attachments: extra Markdown blocks. Good for content that doesn't belong in the same flow as the body — a full code listing, a raw AI conversation, a long quote.

Ratings

A post can carry an optional rating from 1 to 5, typically used for things with a clear object of judgment — books, films, albums, restaurants. The rating shows up on the post page and in lists.

Threads

A Thread is a structure that strings multiple posts together in chronological order — you write a root post, and each subsequent post is a "reply" attached to it.

Good for the kind of content where you think as you write and update across several sittings: you might not know exactly where it's going at the start, but you want readers to follow it in order.

The whole Thread shares the visibility of the root post (Public / Hidden / Private), but Featured state is independent — a single reply can be featured on its own, with no need for the root post to be featured too.

To extend a Thread, click "Reply" at the bottom of the post detail page.

Collections

A Collection is a curated grouping organized under /{slug}. The same post can belong to multiple Collections.

Good for:

  • Long-running topics (for example, reading notes on a particular book)
  • Reading, watching, and listening lists
  • Site-status pages like /now (in the spirit of nownownow, a "what I'm doing now" page — basically a slow, continuously updated story)

Each Collection has its own page and feed.

You can also combine multiple Collections in the URL:

  • /collections/reading+movies
  • /collections/notes+links+quotes

Jant treats this as a combined view across multiple Collections:

  • Shows the union of posts across the listed Collections
  • A Thread that belongs to more than one of those Collections shows up only once
  • The same pattern works for feeds: /collections/{slug1}+{slug2}/feed

Visibility and curation

Publishing states

A post has four publishing states:

  • Public: public, appears on the homepage Latest, visible to anonymous visitors.
  • Hidden from Latest: hidden from the homepage, but still public — direct links work, it can belong to a Collection, and it appears in /archive.
  • Private: visible only after sign-in.
  • Draft: unpublished, visible only to you.

/archive is a complete index of every public post on the site.

Featured

Marking a post as Featured does two things at once: it adds the post to the /featured page, and it pushes the post into the default /feed that goes to your subscribers.

  • Featured posts appear on the Featured page
  • The Featured feed lives at /feed/featured
  • The main /feed can point at Featured or Latest, and defaults to Featured

Why the default feed is Featured

One of Jant's core design choices is to separate "publishing" from "broadcasting."

Publish means the content appears on your site — accessible by direct link, eligible for a Collection, available to extend into a Thread.

Broadcast means the content gets pushed into subscribers' RSS feeds.

In Jant these two are independent:

  • A post marked Hidden from Latest is hidden from the homepage, but the content itself stays public: direct links work, it can belong to a Collection, and it appears in /archive.
  • A Public post appears on the homepage Latest, but does not enter the default /feed.
  • Only posts marked Featured enter /feed and reach subscribers.

This means you can publish small fragments without weight — they appear on your site but don't disturb your subscribers — and only the things you actually want to syndicate end up in the feed.

Default behavior at a glance

The table below assumes the default MAIN_RSS_FEED=featured.

Post state Direct URL Latest /archive Default /feed Collection
Public and Featured Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Public Yes Yes Yes No Yes
Hidden from Latest Yes No Yes No Yes
Private Login only No Login only No Login only
Draft No No No No No

If you switch MAIN_RSS_FEED to latest, the default /feed behavior shifts accordingly, but Hidden from Latest still keeps those posts out of that stream.

URLs and browse pages

Jant uses readable URLs:

  • Post: /{slug}
  • Collection: /{slug}
  • Combined Collection view: /collections/{slug1}+{slug2}+{slug3}
  • Search: /search
  • Archive: /archive
  • Featured page: /featured

Feeds:

  • /feed uses your currently configured main feed
  • /feed/latest returns posts that appear on the homepage Latest (excludes Hidden from Latest)
  • /feed/featured returns Featured posts
  • /archive/feed returns every public post (including Hidden from Latest), and supports filters like ?year=, ?format=, ?collection=, ?media=
  • /{slug}/feed returns the feed for a single Collection
  • /collections/{slug1}+{slug2}/feed returns the feed for a combined Collection view

Custom URLs

In addition to the default slug, Jant lets you set custom paths for posts, Collections, and archive pages, and lets you configure redirects. Manage all of them in the admin under Settings → Advanced → Custom URLs (the route is /settings/custom-urls).

There are four types:

  • Post: assign a new primary path to a specific post; the original slug auto-redirects with a 301.
  • Collection: assign a new primary path to a specific Collection; the original slug auto-redirects with a 301.
  • Archive: pin a set of archive filters to a fixed path — for example, /quotes actually renders /archive?format=quote&visibility=public&view=list.
  • Redirect: redirect any path to another path or to an external URL.

Setting a custom path for a post or Collection

Go to Settings → Advanced → Custom URLs, then click New Custom URL in the top right:

  • Path: the new public path you want — for example, blog/my-post (no leading /)
  • Type: choose Post or Collection
  • Target Slug: the slug of the post or Collection to point at

Once set, the new path becomes the canonical URL for that piece of content (permalink, feed, og:url all use the new path), and the original slug auto-redirects with a 301 — old links already in circulation keep working.

Useful when you want to graft content imported from another platform back onto its original URLs.

Custom archive views

If you frequently browse "a particular kind of post," you can save the matching archive filters under a short, memorable entry point:

  • Path: for example, notes
  • Type: choose Archive
  • Query Parameters: any filters the archive supports — for example, format=note&view=list or format=link&visibility=public

Redirect rules

  • Path: an old or external path that's already in circulation
  • Type: choose Redirect
  • Destination: the target path (/new-path) or a full external URL (https://...)
  • Redirect Type:
    • 301 (Permanent) — for permanent moves; search engines update their index
    • 302 (Temporary) — for temporary changes; search engines keep the original path

A note on editing the slug directly

If you only want to change the public-facing path, prefer the Post / Collection custom URL above — the original slug redirects automatically and there's nothing else to do.

If you really do edit the slug field directly in the editor, note that Jant won't preserve the old address, and the old path becomes a 404. In that case, also go to Settings → Advanced → Custom URLs and add a manual 301 from the old path to the new slug.

Reserved paths

The following top-level paths are used by Jant itself and can't be used as custom URLs:

featured, latest, signin, signout, setup, settings, dash, api, feed, search, archive, media, pages, reset, collections, compose, new, static, assets, _assets, healthz, readyz

Custom paths can only contain lowercase letters, digits, hyphens (-), and slashes (/).

Quick entry point

When you're signed in, visiting /new takes you straight to the compose page — handy as a browser bookmark. If you're not signed in, you'll go through the sign-in page first and land on /new afterward.

What's next

  • GitHub Sync — keep your content synced to a GitHub repo
  • Theming — adjust how your site looks