@welltarot/proof-of-life

Embed the writing process into any blog post. When a reader hits PLAY, they watch your article appear character by character, with every pause, deletion, and second-guess intact.

Why: AI writes text. Humans write with friction, hesitation, and revision. Proof of Life is a receipt for human effort — the tape of how the words actually came together.

How it works: an Obsidian plugin silently records keystrokes while you write. When you publish, it copies a self-contained HTML snippet to your clipboard. Paste it into WordPress, Ghost, Hugo, or any site that accepts HTML, and the replay lives inside the post. No second file, no URL to host, no friction.

One-time setup on your site

Add this one line to your site's header (Ghost: Code Injection → Site Header. WordPress: header.php or a headers plugin. Static sites: your base template):

<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@welltarot/proof-of-life" defer></script>

That's it. Now every post you publish with a Proof of Life embed will play back.

Per-post flow

1. Install the Proof of Life Obsidian plugin (separate package)
2. Write a post in Obsidian — recording is automatic
3. Run the Copy post with replay command
4. Paste into your CMS
5. Publish

The pasted HTML contains a fallback card (visible immediately, even before the script loads) and a base64-encoded copy of the entire recording. When the script runs, the card becomes a full interactive player.

Embed anatomy

The Obsidian plugin outputs something like this:

<div class="proof-of-life-embed" data-pol-payload="H4sIAAA...BASE64...">
  <pre class="pol-brand">⢹⠁ ⣇⡀ ⢀⡀   ⡇⢸ ⢀⡀ ⡇ ⡇   ⢹⠁ ⢀⣀ ⡀⣀ ⢀⡀ ⣰⡀
 ⠸  ⠇⠸ ⠣⠭   ⠟⠻ ⠣⠭ ⠣ ⠣   ⠸  ⠣⠼ ⠏  ⠣⠜ ⠘⠤</pre>
  <p class="pol-kicker">Proof of Life by The Well Tarot</p>
  <p class="pol-fallback-text">
    This text was written by a human. As proof, this post includes an
    in-line replay of the writing process as verification.
  </p>
  <a class="pol-link" href="https://github.com/welltarot/proof-of-life">
    welltarot/proof-of-life
  </a>
</div>

The data-pol-payload attribute holds a gzipped + base64-encoded JSONL recording of every keystroke. All styling is self-contained — the script injects its own <style> block when it loads.

Where it works

• Ghost — yes (one paste into Code Injection, done)
• Self-hosted WordPress — yes (via header.php or a plugin like "Insert Headers and Footers")
• Hugo / Eleventy / Astro / Quartz / Jekyll — yes (add script to base template)
• Any custom HTML — yes
• Substack / Medium / WordPress.com free — no, these block custom scripts

Manual embed (without the Obsidian plugin)

You can also hand-author an embed from any JSONL recording. The payload is produced by gzipping the .jsonl file and base64-encoding the result:

gzip -c recording.jsonl | base64 | tr -d '\n'

Paste the resulting string into data-pol-payload.

Alternative: hosted-asset mode

If you host your .jsonl file separately and prefer a tiny embed that fetches it on demand:

<proof-of-life src="https://example.com/my-post.jsonl.gz" target="#article-content"></proof-of-life>

This mode swaps the content of #article-content during playback and restores it on pause. Useful if you run your own blog and want the replay to inhabit the actual rendered article instead of a separate card.

The recording format

Proof of Life logs are JSONL files where line 1 is a session header and subsequent lines are event tuples. The format is documented in the Obsidian plugin's design doc. All tools in the ecosystem read and write the same format, and the format is plain text — you can inspect any recording by hand.

License

MIT © Joe Bowers