Your blog is invisible to AI. Here's the 1999 fix.

A quick story about a dead protocol, a confused chatbot, and the ten minutes that gave my blog a new kind of reader.

Hey friends,

A small thing happened the other day that I haven't been able to stop thinking about.

I dropped a link to my blog into Claude and asked it to read a few of my recent posts. It came back and told me: can't fetch it. The page returned an empty shell — undefined | loading. My blog runs on NotionNext, the content renders client-side with JavaScript, and AI crawlers don't execute JS. All it got was the skeleton that exists before the page comes to life.

I stared at that spinner for a few seconds, and something clicked: in the AI era, a site built only for human eyes is worth only half of what it could be.

The other half belongs to machine readers. And the door to those readers was already built back in 1999. It's called RSS.

If you've been around the internet long enough, you just felt a little nostalgia twinge. Stay with me — this turned out to be one of the highest-leverage things I've done for my writing in years.

What RSS actually is

One sentence: RSS is a read-only API your blog exposes to the world.

It's a static XML file listing your most recent posts in reverse-chronological order — title, link, publish date, and either a summary or the full text. Any program can grab it with a single HTTP request. No JavaScript, no login, no API key.

If you're technical, picture a public GET /articles?limit=20 endpoint whose response format hasn't changed in over two decades. A protocol defined in 1999, and every reader today still parses every feed. In web terms, that's a living fossil.

It solves exactly one problem: readers no longer have to keep reopening your site to check for updates. Someone adds your feed to their reader, the reader polls it on a schedule, new posts get pushed to them. The subscription lives entirely in their hands — no algorithm, no rate limit, no platform taking a cut.

(Sound familiar? It's basically what you're doing by reading this email. A newsletter is RSS with a friendlier face.)

Why we forgot about it

The platforms won.

When Google Reader shut down in 2013, control over information flow shifted from subscription to recommendation. Twitter/X, TikTok, Instagram — algorithms decide what you see and feed your attention on a drip. Subscription is too "dumb" for that business model: it won't guess what you like, won't manufacture anxiety, won't keep you scrolling.

So RSS retreated to the corner, kept alive by a small group: programmers, content creators, deep readers.

But here's the twist — that small group is exactly the audience an independent writer most wants. People still using an RSS reader actively curate their own sources. They don't scroll a feed; they choose their springs. Get into their list and you've earned a long-term seat at the table: they read everything you publish, not the one piece an algorithm happened to surface.

Why AI is bringing it back

Two shifts changed my mind.

One: machines are your blog's new readers. People now ask ChatGPT and Claude to summarize your work, point assistants at your site to track updates, and let agents pull your content into research. Most of those crawlers don't run JavaScript — so a client-rendered blog is a blank page to them. RSS is pure server-side XML; any AI can parse it in one line. When I sent Claude my RSS link instead, it instantly read every recent post. Same content — the HTML page is a welded-shut door, the feed is an open window.

Two: AI fixes RSS's old fatal flaw. Subscription used to die under its own weight — a hundred feeds, hundreds of daily updates, no human can keep up. An LLM dissolves that. More people now let AI sweep every source once a day and produce a linked digest, surfacing only the few pieces worth reading closely. You pick the sources, AI does the skimming, you keep the deep reading.

In the algorithm era, a platform uses AI to feed you. In the RSS + LLM era, you use AI to feed yourself. The controls have flipped.

Do it in ten minutes

1. Confirm you have a feed. Most frameworks ship one for free. Try yourdomain.com/rss/feed.xml or /atom.xml (NotionNext / Hexo / Hugo), yourdomain.com/feed (WordPress), or yourdomain.com/rss (Ghost). See XML? It works.
2. Make it visible. Put an RSS link (with the orange icon) in your footer or About page, and confirm your HTML <head> has the auto-discovery line:

   <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="https://yourdomain.com/rss/feed.xml" />

1. Use it yourself. Install Feedly, Reeder, or Folo. Subscribe to five writers you admire plus your own blog. Live with it a week and feel the difference between information finding you and you chasing it.

Want to go further? Use n8n or GitHub Actions to pull your feeds on a schedule, send the updates to an LLM API for a daily digest, and push it to your inbox or Telegram. An evening's work — probably the highest-ROI personal infrastructure you'll ever build.

The honest limits

• It won't reach a mass audience. Most people don't know what RSS is. Bulk traffic still comes from social and search. RSS serves the small high-value slice — and the machines.
• Almost no engagement data. No open rates, no idea who's reading. For dashboard people, it feels like writing in the dark.
• Full text vs. summary is a real tradeoff. Full text is kind to readers but invites scrapers; summaries drive clicks but degrade the experience. My take: ship full text. An independent writer's enemy was never being reposted — it's not being read at all.

One last thing

After years of building software, I keep coming back to one conviction: the good protocols outlive the platforms. Email is older than every social app and won't die. HTTP has watched products rise, throw their banquet, and collapse. RSS has been pronounced dead more times than anyone can count — and in the AI era, it found its second spring.

Platforms change. Algorithms change. Whichever channel is hot this quarter will change. But the need for an open, machine-readable outlet anyone can subscribe to does not.

Spend ten minutes today: find your feed, surface it, subscribe to it. Then hand the link to your AI assistant and watch it read back every post you've ever written.

That's the moment you realize your blog just gained a whole new audience that's always online.

Until next time,
Joey

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