A writing tool, for blogs first. You write Markdown. Where part of the page should look a certain way, you open a block and describe it. Rubric sets it from a catalog of parts a person designed, and the preview follows as you type.
On walking
Some notes from the hill path.
Not all those who wander are lost.The Fellowship of the Ring
What a rubric is
In a medieval manuscript the text was copied in black. A rubricator followed with red ink: headings, capitals, and short notes in the margin saying how a passage should be set.
Rubric keeps that division of work. You write the words. A note beside them says how they should look.
How it works
Write
Write Markdown, as you would anyway.
Say it
Where part of the page should look a certain way, open a block and describe it.
::: a quote from the book, big and centerdPick
When you pause, Jev, a small model, reads the line and picks a part from a catalog a person designed, with its settings. It answers in about a seventh of a second.
Pin
The pick shows as gray text at the end of the line. Accept it and it is written in. A pinned line works offline, never changes and lives in git. Your words stay beside it as the record of what you meant.
::: a quote from the book, big and centerd -> quote size=large align=centerPreview
The page is rebuilt as you type, without saving. Hugo renders it in milliseconds, and the preview beside your editor follows.
You write the page. The model never does.
- Squarespace, Ghost and Substack
- You leave the text to pick a block from a menu.
- Rubric’s menu is a sentence in the text.
- v0, Lovable and coding agents
- They write new code each time. It takes a minute, the CSS differs every time and the site drifts.
- Rubric picks the same reviewed part every time, in a moment.
- Bear Blog and plain Markdown
- No blocks at all.
- That is Rubric with no blocks, and it has to look at least as good. A page of plain prose looks designed.
The model reads your sentence and picks from the catalog. It never writes a color, a line of CSS or a word of the page.
Fast, efficient, beautiful, simple
Four words, in the order they are judged. When two pull against each other, the earlier one wins.
- Fast
- A pick shows while you are still looking at the line. Nothing on the writing path waits for an agent.
- Efficient
- One request per finished line, answered once and kept. Half-typed lines are never sent. A day of writing costs about a cent.
- Beautiful
- A page of plain prose looks designed. Every part takes its colors and type from the theme, so a page with a dozen parts still looks like one thing.
- Simple
- A part has a handful of settings, each a plain word. The plain form is the whole format: free, offline, exact.
Here the work compounds. An agent gives you something new each time, a minute later, in different CSS, and nobody reviews it. Rubric gives the same part every time, from parts a person looked at. When nothing fits, the part drafted for you is reviewed once and then kept, for every page after and for everyone.
The catalog
The first catalog is for blogs: eleven parts, drawn in the Paper theme and each reviewed by a person before it joins. Each has a plain form you can write by hand.
- Section isection tone=tint width=wide
- Hero iihero size=tall align=center
- Quote iiiquote size=large align=center
- Callout ivcallout kind=tip
- Figure vfigure width=wide
- Gallery vigallery columns=three
- Post list viipost-list style=dated
- Buttons viiibuttons align=center
- Divider ixdivider style=ornament
- Contents xcontents
- Fold xifold
Every part works without JavaScript. The gallery, the first that runs a script, only gets better with it.
Plain prose first
Most posts are just words. With no blocks at all, the page still has to look finished, and that is the first thing Rubric is judged on. A site’s theme is picked from one line in its rubric.md. Paper is drawn; the other two are next.
On walking
12 October
The hill path starts behind the church and climbs for an hour before it levels out. I walked it most mornings this summer, usually with a book I didn’t open. These are notes from those walks, written up in the evening, a few lines at a time. The first one is about the gate.
On walking
12 October
The hill path starts behind the church and climbs for an hour before it levels out. I walked it most mornings this summer, usually with a book I didn’t open. These are notes from those walks, written up in the evening, a few lines at a time. The first one is about the gate.
On walking
2026-10-12
The hill path starts behind the church and climbs for an hour before it levels out. I walked it most mornings this summer, usually with a book I didn’t open. These are notes from those walks, written up in the evening, a few lines at a time. The first one is about the gate.
Three tiers, none required
Plain
Write the plain form yourself. No model is involved.
::: quote size=large align=centerWith Jev
Write in your own words. Jev, a small model, turns the line into a plain form for you to accept.
::: a quote from the book, big and centerdWith an agent
When nothing in the catalog fits, an agent drafts a new part. A person reviews it once, and then it is kept for everyone.
::: the route as a list of stops, one per day
Status
Rubric is early. Some of it works today, tried by hand in Neovim as it is built. Most of it is still to come.
Working today
- The language server, with ghost text and pinning
- A Neovim plugin that closes blocks as you open them
- A preview that follows the editor as you type
- The blog catalog: eleven parts in the Paper theme, and a page that shows them all
- Jev’s picks, measured: about 140 ms a line
Next
- Two more themes
- A fifty-line test of Jev’s picks
- The
rubriccommand, for any editor - The theme picked from your own words
- New parts drafted when nothing fits
- VS Code, more catalogs and a browser editor