The method / 02
A listening history.
A research memory.
Podcast Corpus preserves complete, official transcripts and their provenance. The Blind Machine can then return to them, cross-read them, and build interpretations with evidence.
Collect evidence before making meaning.
A saved episode is a starting point. An accepted transcript is a research object: complete text, an official source, a retrieval date, and a stable identity. Keeping those layers separate makes the record inspectable.
From an episode to the Archive
Target architectureDiscover
Spotify’s Your Episodes and The Blind Machine playlist identify the episodes to follow.
SpotifyFind the source
Check official RSS transcript links first. Use an official-domain fallback when needed.
RSS / FirecrawlVerify & preserve
Accept complete official text. Preserve its source, timestamp, hash, and version privately.
Corpus / SupabaseInterpret & return
Deliver an accepted object through the Archive’s ingestion boundary. Interpret against evidence.
TBM Archive / downstreamA scheduled TypeScript worker conducts collection. Firecrawl is a fallback. Routine collection uses deterministic rules; AI interpretation belongs downstream.
Try the mechanics
The source gate
These fixed scenarios demonstrate the policy. No external service is called.
Evidence has to pass the gate.
Choose a discovery result, then inspect the outcome.
Missing is a legitimate outcome.
Show notes, summaries, and audio do not become transcripts. A missing official transcript triggers retries on day 1, day 7, and day 30, anchored to the first check. After four unsuccessful checks, the episode becomes unavailable. Ambiguous evidence goes to operator review.
Each layer has a job.
- Spotify
- Episode discovery and source membership.
- Supabase
- Target private datastore, scheduled worker, queue, and operational ledger.
- GitHub
- Canonical code, policy, contracts, tests, and migration record.
- Lovable
- Planned operator interface connected to the operator-owned backend.
- Sidekick & Sheets
- Earlier implementation and frozen migration evidence.
- TBM Archive
- Separate admission boundary and the downstream research instrument.
Tonight’s demonstration
A working interface.
A deliberately bounded sample.
Working here
Search and filter 15 real episode metadata records, inspect historical transcript status and official source links, follow manually assigned editorial lenses, and simulate the source gate.
Project record
The repository documents completed portable domain policy and an implemented Phase 2 backend. Its README, last updated 31 August 2026, says that backend was not yet deployed. Production deployment is not verified by this demo.
Kept separate
No live Spotify sync, transcript scraping, AI generation, or Archive delivery runs here. Full transcripts and credentials are absent. Editorial questions and related items are curated demo annotations, not generated findings.
Grounding: the canonical repository README and domain policy, the frozen Google Sheets library, and Sidekick’s earlier operating guide. Metadata retrieved 30 September 2026; individual status checks date from July–August 2026.
Keep the source.
Leave the interpretation open.