How I Built a TIL Microblog to Save the Things I'd Otherwise Forget

I learn small things constantly: a git flag I didn't know existed, a CSS trick that solves a layout problem, a Python one-liner that replaces five lines of boilerplate. I used to share these on Mastodon, but they'd get lost in the feed within hours. Writing a full blog post for each one felt like too much overhead.

The solution was a TIL (Today I Learned) section: shorter posts with less formatting, a separate RSS feed, and deliberately low friction for publishing.

The Setup

I added a /til/ route to my Next.js site. Each TIL post is a simple markdown file with minimal frontmatter:

---

title: "Use `git log --oneline --graph` for a compact commit tree"
date: 2026-03-15
tags: ["git"]
---

Running `git log --oneline --graph --all` shows a compact ASCII commit
graph in the terminal. I use this daily now instead of `git log`.

No summary, no hero image, no category: just a title, date, tag, and a few sentences. The low overhead is intentional. If writing a post takes more than two minutes, I won't do it.

Separate RSS Feed

One request I had: let people subscribe to TIL posts separately from full blog posts. In Next.js, I created a separate RSS feed endpoint:

// app/til/feed.xml/route.ts
export async function GET() {
  const posts = getAllTilPosts();
  const feed = generateFeed({
    title: "TIL - Loc's Blog",
    posts,
    feedUrl: `${SITE_URL}/til/feed.xml`,
  });
  return new Response(feed, {
    headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/xml' },
  });
}

This way, RSS subscribers can choose between everything or just the quick tips.

Automation With a Custom Rake Task

I created a script that generates a new TIL post template from the command line:

npm run til "git log --oneline graph"

This creates a new .md file with the date pre-filled, the title from the argument, and stub content that I just fill in. Removing friction was the key: if I had to remember the file naming convention and frontmatter format each time, I'd stop doing it.

What Changed

Since adding the TIL section, I write down things I would have let pass before. A fix for a Docker networking issue, a browser devtools trick, a shell alias I keep reusing: each one takes 30 seconds to write and saves me 10 minutes of re-figuring-it-out later.

The weekly mailing list integration is the next step: a brief summary of recent TILs that goes out alongside the regular newsletter.

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