I built Raw Signal because I kept losing blog posts to ceremony.

Not writer’s block exactly. Something dumber.

I would have a rough thought, put it somewhere, then immediately make the next step too heavy:

  • Which app should this live in?
  • Is it a note or a draft?
  • Does it need a title?
  • Should I make it presentable now?
  • Where do images go?
  • Is this worth publishing?

By the time I answered those questions, the thought had usually gone cold. Sometimes it was still sitting in a notes app or a chat thread. Sometimes I could not remember where I had put it. Very professional operation.

Raw Signal is my attempt to make the first step almost embarrassingly small:

  1. Drop messy notes into raw/
  2. Ask the agent to compose
  3. Review the draft
  4. Move approved posts into done/
  5. Build a static site

The raw note is allowed to be ugly. It can have fragments, bullets, links, quotes, unfinished arguments, and titles I may never use. If the system requires polish at the capture stage, I will avoid capturing anything.

The folders are the product:

  • raw/ has thoughts I have not dealt with yet
  • processed/ has the original notes after the agent handled them
  • drafts/ has the draft package
  • done/ has posts I approved
  • site/ has generated output

No database. No dashboard. No mystery state.

The agent reads TONE.md for style and AGENTS.md for the workflow. It can research, preserve marked quotes, write a draft, create an image brief, and leave notes about what still feels weak.

The build command is deliberately boring. It does not call an LLM. It reads done/, renders HTML, generates RSS and a sitemap, and stops.

I like that split:

  • agents for ambiguity
  • build tools for deterministic chores

I also wanted exact quotes to be easy to protect. If I write this in a raw note:

> This is the exact quote I want preserved.
Source: https://example.com/source

the agent should keep the quote intact and carry the source along with it. Sometimes the exact wording is the whole reason I saved the note.

Raw Signal is not a CMS pitch. It is a small agreement with myself: capture the thought while it is still rough, let the agent help with the annoying middle, then publish only after I have looked at it with human eyes.

If it makes writing happen more often, it worked.