The OpenTrib blog

Notes on what we are building.

Product decisions, design arguments, and what we are learning from the creators and readers who are building this with us.

Latest · Product

Why we organised discovery around intent, not format

Every marketplace we looked at sorts by what a thing is. People do not arrive thinking "PDF" — they arrive wanting to learn something. Here is what changed when we built for that instead.

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Ayesha RahmanProduct2 September 20267 min read

More writing

Creators
What a fair revenue share actually looks like
Publishing the number is the easy part. We wrote down why it is the number, what it pays for, and what would have to change for it to move.
Daniel OkoroFounder26 August 20269 min read
Community
Communities are not comment sections
A thread under a product is a reaction to it. A room is a place people return to. Designing the second one taught us why the first was never going to be enough.
Meera ShahCommunity19 August 20266 min read
Design
The case for a quiet interface
We removed the badges, the counters and most of the colour. Reading got better and nothing we were afraid would happen actually happened.
Tomas LindqvistDesign11 August 20265 min read
Company
Writing the brand before the product
We wrote down what OpenTrib believes before we designed a single page. It has settled more arguments than any spec we have written since.
Ayesha RahmanProduct4 August 20268 min read
Creators
What creators told us about owning an audience
Twenty conversations with people who make things for a living. The word that came up most often was not money — it was permission.
Priya RaghunathanResearch28 July 202610 min read
Design
Accessibility is not a launch task
Contrast, focus states and keyboard paths were in the first components we built. Here is what that cost, and what retrofitting them would have cost instead.
Tomas LindqvistDesign21 July 20266 min read

Building something of your own?

Most of what we write about comes from conversations with creators. See how publishing on OpenTrib works, and what you keep.

For creators

Why we organised discovery around intent, not format

More writing

What a fair revenue share actually looks like

Communities are not comment sections

The case for a quiet interface

Writing the brand before the product

What creators told us about owning an audience

Accessibility is not a launch task

Building something of your own?