reading

name	reading
description	Turn an Aesthetic Computer essay into a published spoken-word "reading" (podcast episode) in @jeffrey's ElevenLabs voice — narrate, score a lo-fi bed, make a caption video, and publish to Buzzsprout (which fans out to Spotify/Apple/YouTube). Use when @jeffrey says "make a reading of <essay>", "turn this essay into a podcast", "publish <month> as a reading", or references the AC Readings podcast.

reading → AC Readings podcast

Turns an essay (papers/essay-*/*.tex or opinion/*.md) into a published episode. Tooling lives in marketing/podcast/bin/. Voice is jeffrey-pvc via /api/say (hash-cached, so re-runs are cheap).

Guardrails (read first)

• Publish allowlist. Only publish essays @jeffrey has cleared. NEVER publish the REGARDE-adjacent reading named-markets ("The Market on Your Name") — it's under NDA. The allowlist is marketing/podcast/lib/hosted.mjs (shared by feed.mjs + ship.mjs) plus the papers PODCASTS set; a slug not listed there does not go public — ship.mjs hard-refuses it.
• Register the essay first if it's new: it needs an entry in papers/cli.mjs (PAPER_MAP + PAPER_COPY + the essays category + the reading-length map + a catalog abstract) with a siteName like aesthetic-<slug>-essay, and the hosted mp3 uses that siteName.
• Register the podcast link: add the siteName to PODCASTS in papers/cli.mjs, and add the "<slug>": "<siteName>" line to marketing/podcast/lib/hosted.mjs. Optional: set a per-episode substrate in marketing/podcast/lib/substrates.mjs (EPISODE_SUBSTRATE) — clean / tape / radio / night; default tape.

Steps

1. Produce the audio. From marketing/podcast/:

   node bin/produce.mjs ../../papers/essay-<slug>/<base>.tex [--kit felt] [--open]
   

   Per-sentence, beat-aligned to a lo-fi bed (kits: felt/brush/wood/808/pulse — audition with node bin/kits.mjs). Writes out/<slug>.{mp3,srt,json} and a cover. Register the reading register is storytelling, not salesy.

2. Make the caption video (caption-only, centered, per-episode theme):

   node bin/video.mjs <slug>            # theme from THEMES map, or:
   node bin/video.mjs <slug> --bg '#101822' --fg '#EAF0F2' --title '#8CE99A'
   

   → out/youtube/<slug>.mp4. (This ffmpeg has no libass — captions are baked with ImageMagick and concatenated as video clips, not the concat demuxer.)

3. Ship it — one command (ship.mjs does the whole publish dance). Needs aesthetic-computer-vault/buzzsprout/.env (BUZZSPROUT_TOKEN, BUZZSPROUT_PODCAST_ID) and DO Spaces creds in the environment:

   node bin/ship.mjs <slug>              # Buzzsprout + CDN + feed + verify
   node bin/ship.mjs <slug> --private    # stage on Buzzsprout (not public yet)
   node bin/ship.mjs <slug> --papers     # also run papers deploy + index
   

   In order, ship.mjs:

   1. refuses any slug not in lib/hosted.mjs (the allowlist guardrail);
   2. Buzzsprout — uploads the episode → Spotify / Apple / YouTube (one API call = live everywhere; writes out/<slug>.buzzsprout.json);
   3. CDN — copies mp3 + cover to DO Spaces under the hosted name. This is required, not optional — the papers "podcast" link points at assets.aesthetic.computer/podcast/<siteName>.mp3 and stays dark without it;
   4. feed — regenerates out/feed.xml + index.json (allowlist-filtered);
   5. verify — HEADs the live CDN mp3 + papers PDF so a claimed publish really landed.

   It then prints the finish block. Audio is never committed to git — it lives on Buzzsprout + the CDN. Canonical show URL: https://pod.prompt.ac (podcast.aesthetic.computer 301s there); RSS https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/2628235.rss.

4. Light the papers listing — deploy the PDF + regen the site index so the essay shows a podcast link (mirrors cards), then push + deploy lith (papers is served by lith, and system/public/** is a live-served path):

   node bin/ship.mjs <slug> --papers    # (or) node papers/cli.mjs deploy && node papers/cli.mjs index
   # commit ONLY the episode's files (never `git add -A` — the shared tree
   # accumulates build churn; see the finish block ship.mjs prints):
   git add papers/essay-<slug>/<slug>.tex papers/cli.mjs \
           marketing/podcast/bin/feed.mjs marketing/podcast/lib/hosted.mjs \
           marketing/podcast/lib/substrates.mjs \
           system/public/papers.aesthetic.computer/<siteName>.pdf \
           system/public/papers.aesthetic.computer/thumbs/<siteName>.jpg \
           system/public/papers.aesthetic.computer/index.html
   git commit -m "podcast: <slug> reading" && git pull --rebase --autostash && git push
   fish lith/deploy.fish
   

   Housekeeping: papers/cli.mjs build/deploy regenerates many .log/.toc build artifacts across all papers. Do NOT commit them — revert with git checkout -- $(git diff --name-only | grep -E '\.(log|toc|aux)$').

Notes

• Long listens: open in QuickTime (open -a "QuickTime Player" <mp3>); slab playback gets cut off by the shell.
• Voice/mix knobs: --bedgain (music level), --kit, --stability/--similarity/--speed.
• See marketing/podcast/SCORE.md for the full lane doc.