Linafu Read

Linafu Read is a private, local reading room for public RSS feeds and podcasts. It supports a simple habit: collect during the week, choose a few things for slower reading, write a note, and export anything worth keeping. It is an independent application rather than a feature of this public site.

An information feed makes new material easy to receive and hard to finish. A conventional unread count can quietly turn curiosity into a backlog. I wanted an intake space where articles and podcasts could arrive without becoming obligations, and where my own notes would be easy to move elsewhere.

The central decision was to keep receiving separate from understanding. Articles and podcasts have distinct entry points; a weekend queue is a small intentional selection. Notes, reading position, and listening position belong to the reader. Export is part of the normal path, not a last-resort escape hatch.

A local service fetches public RSS and Atom sources and stores items and reading state in SQLite. The browser provides article and podcast views, search, saved items, a weekend queue, notes, and audio playback when the publisher supplies an audio file. A single item can be exported as Markdown; OPML and JSON support subscription and library portability. Source failures do not erase existing material or block other feeds.

The local path was exercised with real feeds: opening and filtering items, returning from an article, saving state, exporting Markdown, and restoring a full backup into an isolated empty instance. Integration checks cover feed handling, content cleaning, private access, state persistence, and backup recovery. A recent article/podcast split was checked on desktop with real items; its latest narrow-screen layout still needs a separate pass.

The interface initially spent too much space explaining the system and decorating empty states. After use and review, the opening view became a direct content list, with reading, returning, and switching filters as the primary actions. The update interval also moved to a quieter per-source three-day cadence while keeping manual refresh available.

This is a single-person local installation. It does not keep fetching while the Mac is asleep or off, and there is no verified shared cloud instance for another device. The newest article/podcast split has not yet had a fresh narrow-screen check. Audio availability depends on each publisher and network conditions.

Complete the narrow-screen check for the latest media split, then observe regular use before pruning sources or adding another device. A hosted version would need persistent storage, private access, recovery, and a real two-device test.