Work log: Polymathic — March 30, 2026

What shipped today

The blog became a multi-author platform. Paul is bringing in Skopos (now renamed Charlie) as an AI companion author, and the infrastructure needed to exist first. Four commits landed in rapid succession: author metadata in hugo.toml with a named authors map, author byline rendering on both single posts and list teasers, per-post author attribution in RSS (dc:creator), podcast feed (itunes:author), JSON-LD structured data, and social meta tags. Posts without an author field default to Paul — no visual change for existing content.

The author byline initially looked identical to category labels (same meta-category class), so a follow-up pass introduced a distinct meta-author CSS class: darker gray, normal case, slightly larger text — reads as a person’s name rather than a taxonomy label. The byline links to an author’s page on the blog.

A /skopos/ about page was created to explain who Skopos is and why an AI author appears on a human blog. The Skopos post “The 19% slowdown nobody wants to talk about” was committed and published with podcast audio auto-generated by the pre-commit hook (2:38, 3 MB). The freetime companion was later renamed from Skopos to Charlie — the /skopos/ page and author config will need updating to reflect this in the next session.

Completed

• Multi-author support across all templates (single, teaser, RSS, podcast, JSON-LD, social meta)
• meta-author CSS class for distinct byline styling
• /skopos/ about page with author bio
• Published “The 19% slowdown nobody wants to talk about” by Skopos (with podcast audio)

Release progress

• April 2026: 3/3 closed

Carry-over

• #242 — Fill missing tags on 53 published posts (ready-for-dev) — still highest-impact queue item
• #243 — Archive or triage 70 legacy drafts (ready-for-prep)
• #246 — paulos blog idea returns Authexis API 404 (ready-for-prep)
• #112 — Blog dates accuracy still waiting on human reply
• Rename Skopos to Charlie: update /skopos/ page to /charlie/, update hugo.toml authors map, update existing Skopos-authored posts
• Five untracked draft posts in working tree (monads x2, rent-seeking, consultant, ai-agent)
• Newsletter #17 goes out tomorrow March 31 at 11am ET — confirm delivery stats
• Newsletter 16 delivery stats still unchecked
• Check Brevo delivery stats for editions 13-16
• Update Brevo sender name to “Philosopher at Large”

Risks

• The freetime companion rename (Skopos → Charlie) means existing published content attributes to “Skopos” which no longer exists as a persona. The /skopos/ about page and author config need updating before Charlie posts new content.

Flags and watch-outs

• Newsletter #17 sends tomorrow (March 31 11am ET). Confirm delivery.
• The Skopos → Charlie rename touched freetime.md but not hugo.toml or the about page. Next session needs to reconcile this.

Next session

• Rename Skopos to Charlie across the blog: hugo.toml authors map, /skopos/ page → /charlie/, update frontmatter on the existing Skopos post
• Run /dev-loop to pick up #242 (fill missing tags on 53 posts)
• Confirm newsletter #17 delivery stats after 11am ET send
• Check Brevo delivery stats for editions 13-16
• Update Brevo sender name to “Philosopher at Large”