Trying org-tufte for public notes

On <2026-04-28 Tue> I tried to add footnotes to notes in Textpod. It works, {C-c C-x f} adds a footnote link. Then publishing works normally, just make sure footnotes heading is level down of the published note (usually h2).

But, footnotes looks ugly, and rendered at the bottom. I want sidenotes, as in Tufte CSS. I remember org-tufte exporter, so decided to try. Apparently, there's newer version exists - Zilong-Li/org-tufte. Let's try it.

(use-package org-tufte :ensure nil)

Export to plain HTML looks fine, side-notes as footnotes work fine this is side note, but in Org file it's actually a footnote! . But when exporting into Textpod – body only, + custom HTML and JS injected – it breaks.

Okay, time to some vibe-coding. New package textpod-org-tufte.el.

HTML export to Textpod

On <2026-04-27 Mon> I'm once again fascinated how bad Markdown is and how broken the export is. So for Textpod I decided to skip Markdown, and export notes directly from Org to HTML.

Problem

Markdown can't handle lists properly.

This Org Mode block:

- github :: [[https://github.com/inanimate-tech/mist][inanimate-tech/mist]]
- posts ::
  - [[https://interconnected.org/home/2026/02/12/mist][mist: Share and edit Markdown together, quickly (Interconnected)]]
  - [[https://interconnected.org/home/2026/04/10/open-mist][mist is now open source and looking for interop (Interconnected)]]

: curl https://mist.inanimate.tech/new -T file.md

is exported as this Markdown block:

-   **github:** [inanimate-tech/mist](https://github.com/inanimate-tech/mist)
-   **posts:** -   [mist: Share and edit Markdown together, quickly (Interconnected)](https://interconnected.org/home/2026/02/12/mist)
    -   [mist is now open source and looking for interop (Interconnected)](https://interconnected.org/home/2026/04/10/open-mist)

    curl https://mist.inanimate.tech/new -T file.md

which is then converted to this HTML block:



The list was rendered completely wrong.

When exporting from Org directly to HTML, it's correct - dl/dt/dd tags are used, comment rendered as verbatim text:


github
inanimate-tech/mist
posts
curl https://mist.inanimate.tech/new -T file.md

Solution

Luckily, the change in texptpod.el is this:

-   (org-export-string-as org-text 'md t)
+   (org-export-string-as org-text 'html t)

I also changed backend to preprocess internal links, they look like this:

../markdown.md // for Markdown export
../markdown.html#5B98C220-A8F4-4202-9708-82B0D000A4E9 // for HTML export

Preprocessing changes both to ?q=markdown., so search starts to /markdown. which matches both md and html extensions.

textpod.el v0.3.0

Another round of improvements of textpod.el, a companion Emacs package to Textpod.

Custom ID format - attribute name and prefix

Added two defcustom options in textpod.el:

  • textpod-id-property (default "TEXTPOD_ID") - name of the Org property used to store the note id.
  • textpod-id-prefix (default "") - prefix prepended to ids when stored, stripped before sending requests to the server.

Introduced textpod--strip-prefix helper and updated all id call sites (textpod-open-current-note, textpod-org-heading-to-note, textpod-org-region-to-note) to respect these configs.

textpod-set-id sets ID without creating a node

I need a function to create texpod id property without sending note to the server. This is needed to submit old notes so they have proper timestamp.

Added textpod-set-id: an interactive command that sets textpod-id-property on the current heading (with textpod-id-prefix) derived from a time as YYYYMMDDhhmmss, without making any HTTP request.

  • No prefix arg → uses (current-time).
  • With prefix arg → prompts via org-read-date, so the note can be back-dated before later uploading with textpod-org-heading-to-note.
Quickly getting to Textpod notes

Using Ack is possible, placing point on a file-name and pressing {H-RET} will call visit-source and go directly to the line.

ack ":ID:\s*textpod_" *.org | grep -v 2026-04-22 | head -n 20

2026-04-12.org:226::ID: textpod_20260412124048
2026-04-13.org:10::ID: textpod_20260414214110
2026-04-13.org:237::ID: textpod_20260414212612
2026-04-13.org:247::ID: textpod_20260414224720
2026-04-13.org:263::ID: textpod_20260414210103
2026-04-13.org:314::ID: textpod_20260414224944
2026-04-16.org:12::ID: textpod_20260416100352
2026-04-16.org:97::ID: textpod_20260417092822
2026-04-21.org:205::ID: textpod_20260421120000

Since I made my Textpod notes to be Org-roam notes, I can query them directly from SQLite DB.

  • (sqlite-mode-open-file "~/.config/emacs/org-roam.db")

    select id, file, title from nodes n where n.id like '"textpod_%"';

textpod_20260329123259 ~/Notes/2026-03.org Standalone HTML Galleries
textpod_20260315124829 ~/Notes/2026-03.org Build HackerNews Legible Frontend
textpod_20260415130636 ~/Notes/2026-04.org Improve public notes
textpod_20260415205822 ~/Notes/2026-04.org “Why Kim Wexler Was The Real Villain of Better Call Saul” by BreakingHub (19 min)
textpod_20260415210948 ~/Notes/2026-04.org “Linus Lays down the Law” – The PrimeTime (ThePrimeagen), 13 min
textpod_20260412124048 ~/Notes/daily/2026-04-12.org Improve HackerNews Legible Frontend
textpod_20260414214110 ~/Notes/daily/2026-04-13.org Interview about k8s setup in Amazon
textpod_20260414212612 ~/Notes/daily/2026-04-13.org kumo – local AWS emulator in Go
textpod_20260414224720 ~/Notes/daily/2026-04-13.org Snowflake MCP server
textpod_20260414210103 ~/Notes/daily/2026-04-13.org Claude Code quota exhausted / degraded quality
textpod_20260414224944 ~/Notes/daily/2026-04-13.org Trying Textpod once again
textpod_20250612070826 ~/Notes/html.org I'm betting on HTML
textpod_20260421120000 ~/Notes/daily/2026-04-21.org Rewrite Textpod to Go
textpod_20260416100352 ~/Notes/daily/2026-04-16.org Advice to org-roam-dailies-goto-today
textpod_20260417092822 ~/Notes/daily/2026-04-16.org Links <2026-04-16 Thu>
textpod_20260422124810 ~/Notes/daily/2026-04-22.org textpod.el v0.3.0

[TK: :colnames yes got broken for some reason].

My textpod.el config

The config automatically makes notes published to Textpod as Org-roam nodes.

(use-package textpod
  :config
  (setq textpod-id-property "ID"
        textpod-id-prefix "textpod_"
        textpod-token (cadr (auth-source-user-and-password "finita.myaddr.dev" "textpod"))
        ;;textpod-url "/notes"
        textpod-url "http://localhost:3000/notes"
        )
  :bind (("C-c b x" . textpod-set-id)
         ("C-c b b" . textpod-org-heading-to-note)
         ("C-c b o" . textpod-open-current-note)))

Updates:

  • <2026-04-23 Thu>: add keybindings

Rewrite Textpod to Go

On <2026-04-21 Tue> I rewritten Textpod from Rust to Go.

While I'm on vacation with the new MacBook Pro M4 Pro and I have installed only bare minimum on it, I don't have Rust toolchain but do have Go. So, asked Claude to do rewrite. The only external dependency is goldmark package to render Markdown as HTMLs.

Updated Elisp helpers:

(use-package textpod
  :config
  (setq textpod-token (cadr (auth-source-user-and-password "finita.myaddr.dev" "textpod"))
        ;;textpod-url "/notes"
        textpod-url "http://localhost:3000/notes"
        ))

(let ((default-directory "~/Developer/src/github.com/velppa/textpod"))
  (async-shell-command "go build -o ~/.local/bin/textpod ." "*textpod-build*"))

(let ((default-directory "~/Developer/src/github.com/velppa/finita-la-comedia/textpod")
      (buffer-name "*textpod-server*"))
  (when (get-buffer buffer-name)
    (kill-buffer buffer-name))
  (async-shell-command (format "textpod --token %s --base-path notes" textpod-token) buffer-name))

(browse-url (format "%s?token=%s" textpod-url textpod-token))

Improve public notes

Next round of improving Textpod on <2026-04-15 Wed>.

Deploy publicly –

Introduced --base-path flag, to serve notes under sub-path.

To start Textpod with sub-path, use:

textpod --token $TEXTPOD_TOKEN --base-path notes
Publish textpod.el to the repository

textpod.el is a companion Emacs package for quick publishing notes from Org Mode documents.

Install it like this:

(use-package textpod
  :config
  (setq textpod-token (cadr (auth-source-user-and-password "finita.myaddr.dev" "textpod")))
  (setq textpod-url "/notes"))

Then these helper functions do the heavy-lifting:

  • textpod-org-region-to-note: Convert the Org region between BEG and END to Markdown and send to Textpod.
  • textpod-org-heading-to-note: Send the current heading’s subtree to Textpod.
  • textpod-open-current-note: Open the current heading’s Textpod note in a browser.

When creating a note, textpod.el sets TEXTPOD_ID property that's equal to node'id.

Change separator in notes.md to ^L

Default separator \n\n---\n\n is fragile as it requires exactly two newlines before / after the note. I often messed up notes when editing notes.md file manually. To fix that, I replaced it with ^L character (insert in Emacs via C-q C-l) which usually represents new pages.

Fix attachments links

Attachement links need to respect --base-path flag.

Handling attachments

My current workflow:

  • Assets are stored next to Notes under assets/ directory

  • I can quickly search for them, then open in Emacs/qView:

    find ../assets -name "*prefix-in-emacs*"
    
    ../assets/m-g-prefix-in-emacs.png
    ../assets/m-s-prefix-in-emacs.png
    
  • I can reference an asset as an image: img

  • An image is a link to an image file that does not have a description part (Images (The Org Manual)).

  • Textpod already support images. What happens when I drag-n-drop an image file to the textarea? Textpod copies them under attachments directory.

What I want:

  • When creating a public note containing an image via API (using textpod.el), copy the asset to assets/ directory, mimicing the directory structure in the notes.
  • I need another API endpoint - POST /notes/assets/<name>, accepting binary as payload.

Okay, I implemented it, let's test.

textpod-org-heading-to-note

Prompt: Implement textpod-org-heading-to-note function, it should select current (top) heading - the one that has TEXTPOD_ID parameter, and call textpod-org-region-to-note on it.

The command {M-x textpod-org-heading-to-note} works!

Should the textpod id be just id?

Currently I use TEXTPOD_ID property. If using ID property, notes will automatically become Org-roam nodes. Currently IDs are generated as timestamps via (setq org-id-method 'ts) with nanoseconds precision. Then it will come with seconds precision. I will need to a prefix, to be able to quickly find them (e.g. with {M-x deadgrep}).

Wrap h3 into details on index page

To declutter the index page, h3 markdown headings (h2 Org headings) are wrapped into <details> tag. The note page renders normally, showing table of contents on the left sidebar.

Trying Textpod once again

On <2026-04-13 Mon> I installed Textpod on Mac Book Pro M1 using Cargo (Rust tooling).

Good:

Open questions:

I ended up forking it to https://github.com/velppa/textpod and greatly improving it for my needs. You're reading notes served by Textpod v0.2.0. It is my project.

Notable changes:

Later changes to setup will go into separate notes.