Thoughts

Exo News Network website project started. Tech stack locked: Astro 5 (SSG), Railway Postgres (shared with UFO pipeline, no new DB cost), Cloudflare Pages (free hosting), Cloudflare R2 (shared with pipeline for assets). Blog content stored as markdown in Postgres, rendered at build time. Dark theme, professional news network aesthetic. Four character correspondents write bylined articles. No merch store in v1, likely Snipcart for Phase 2 but not locked. Decided against Supabase Pro upgrade ($25/mo + $10/project) since Railway Postgres covers website needs with direct Astro queries at build time. Project lives at ~/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/Projects/exo-news-network/. Separate git repo from the UFO pipeline. Phase 1: scaffolding, DB tables, landing page, base theme. Phase 2: blog pages, character profiles, YouTube integration. Phase 3: polish, deploy hook, content pipeline integration.

Exo News Network Website Architecture (brainstormed 2026-03-22) Domain: exonewsnetwork.com (purchased through Cloudflare) Concept: Straight-faced alien news network. Four ET characters (Reptilian, Grey, Mantis, Little Green Man) are on-air correspondents who deliver all content in-character. Audience is in on the joke, characters never break kayfabe. Tone like The Onion run by aliens who don't know they're funny. Pages: Landing page with latest YouTube embed and news ticker. Blog with character-bylined articles written in each character's voice. Character profile pages ("Our Correspondents"). Merch store (Printify drop-ship). Community deferred to later. Tech stack: Next.js or Astro on Cloudflare Pages (free, unlimited sites/bandwidth). Supabase for content storage. Snipcart or similar for checkout (Stripe/PayPal, Dave never touches money). Printify for fulfillment. YouTube Data API for video sync. Content pipeline: Two Gemini Gems. One produces Short script + companion blog post in single pass (hijacks existing fast Gem pattern). One standalone blog-focused Gem for deeper editorial pieces with more steering. Both write in-character. Claude processes into production format. Flux LoRA pipeline reused for blog header images. Design: Professional news network UI played straight. Brushed metal ENN branding. No joke fonts or wacky colors. Clean editorial layout. The comedy is emergent from serious alien correspondents covering UFO topics earnestly. Timeline: Architecture defined now. Channel launches April 1, 2026. Site built when Dave has bandwidth, after channel has traction. Not WordPress. First Claude Code-built site. Cloudflare Pages free tier (500 builds/mo, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited projects).