Handbook: Writing blogs as an engineer#17334
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Vale prose linter → found 13 errors, 15 warnings, 1 suggestions in your markdown Full report → Copy the linter results into an LLM to batch-fix issues. Linter being weird? Update the rules!
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| Line | Severity | Message | Rule |
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| 7:223 | warning | 'Blitzscale' is a possible misspelling. | PostHogBase.Spelling |
| 11:49 | warning | 'Blitzscale' is a possible misspelling. | PostHogBase.Spelling |
| 12:107 | error | Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash. | PostHogBase.EnDash |
| 12:171 | warning | 'Blitzscale' is a possible misspelling. | PostHogBase.Spelling |
| 12:366 | error | Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash. | PostHogBase.EnDash |
| 13:149 | warning | 'Blitzscale' is a possible misspelling. | PostHogBase.Spelling |
| 16:191 | suggestion | Prefer 'proper nouns or they' over 'he'. | PostHogBase.Inclusivity |
| 18:119 | error | Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash. | PostHogBase.EnDash |
| 69:24 | error | Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash. | PostHogBase.EnDash |
| 81:91 | error | Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash. | PostHogBase.EnDash |
| 105:12 | error | Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash. | PostHogBase.EnDash |
| 107:23 | error | Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash. | PostHogBase.EnDash |
| 116:75 | error | Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash. | PostHogBase.EnDash |
| 117:70 | error | Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash. | PostHogBase.EnDash |
| 118:24 | error | Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash. | PostHogBase.EnDash |
| 120:75 | error | Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash. | PostHogBase.EnDash |
| 124:4 | warning | 'FAQ' heading should be in sentence case, and product names should be capitalized. | PostHogBase.SentenceCase |
| 128:243 | error | Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash. | PostHogBase.EnDash |
| 132:45 | error | Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash. | PostHogBase.EnDash |
contents/handbook/engineering/writing-blogs.md — 0 errors, 8 warnings, 0 suggestions
| Line | Severity | Message | Rule |
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| 11:64 | warning | 'Karpathy's' is a possible misspelling. | PostHogBase.Spelling |
| 11:75 | warning | 'Autoresearch' is a possible misspelling. | PostHogBase.Spelling |
| 11:228 | warning | 'Tokio' is a possible misspelling. | PostHogBase.Spelling |
| 13:125 | warning | Capitalize 'Experiments' for PostHog's product. Use 'experiments' for the general industry concept. | PostHogBase.ProductNames |
| 57:40 | warning | Use 'PostHog' instead of 'posthog'. | Vale.Terms |
| 65:47 | warning | Use 'PostHog' instead of 'posthog'. | Vale.Terms |
| 67:88 | warning | 'Bluesky' is a possible misspelling. | PostHogBase.Spelling |
| 67:213 | warning | 'upvotes' is a possible misspelling. | PostHogBase.Spelling |
contents/handbook/engineering/writing-docs.md — 0 errors, 2 warnings, 0 suggestions
| Line | Severity | Message | Rule |
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| 17:4 | warning | 'What about the so-called Docs & Wizard team?' heading should be in sentence case, and product names should be capitalized. | PostHogBase.SentenceCase |
| 61:127 | warning | Use 'PostHog' instead of 'posthog'. | Vale.Terms |
jina-yoon
reviewed
Jun 5, 2026
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| If you need a skeleton of post, many technical blogs look like this: | ||
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| 1. Hook: The surprising result or pain you experience. |
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| 1. Hook: The surprising result or pain you experience. | |
| 1. **Hook:** The surprising result or pain you experience. |
jina-yoon
reviewed
Jun 5, 2026
| If you need a skeleton of post, many technical blogs look like this: | ||
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| 1. Hook: The surprising result or pain you experience. | ||
| 2. Context: What the state of things were. Enough so readers can follow. |
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| 2. Context: What the state of things were. Enough so readers can follow. | |
| 2. **Context:** What the state of things were. Enough so readers can follow. |
jina-yoon
reviewed
Jun 5, 2026
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| 1. Hook: The surprising result or pain you experience. | ||
| 2. Context: What the state of things were. Enough so readers can follow. | ||
| 3. Journey: The investigation of what you tried, what failed, and what succeeded. Include the "takeaways" as part of the journey. |
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| 3. Journey: The investigation of what you tried, what failed, and what succeeded. Include the "takeaways" as part of the journey. | |
| 3. **Journey:** The investigation of what you tried, what failed, and what succeeded. Include the "takeaways" as part of the journey. |
jina-yoon
reviewed
Jun 5, 2026
| 1. Hook: The surprising result or pain you experience. | ||
| 2. Context: What the state of things were. Enough so readers can follow. | ||
| 3. Journey: The investigation of what you tried, what failed, and what succeeded. Include the "takeaways" as part of the journey. | ||
| 4. Resolution: What actually changed? Give specifics, numbers, and/or visuals if you can. |
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| 4. Resolution: What actually changed? Give specifics, numbers, and/or visuals if you can. | |
| 4. **Resolution:** What actually changed? Give specifics, numbers, and/or visuals if you can. |
jina-yoon
reviewed
Jun 5, 2026
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| 1. Have an idea. | ||
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| 2. Share in the [`#content-and-video-ideas`](https://posthog.slack.com/archives/C015CRUQR7Y) Slack channel or write up outline or draft. |
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| 2. Share in the [`#content-and-video-ideas`](https://posthog.slack.com/archives/C015CRUQR7Y) Slack channel or write up outline or draft. | |
| 2. Sharing in the [`#content-and-video-ideas`](https://posthog.slack.com/archives/C015CRUQR7Y) Slack channel is optional, but useful if you want feedback on the idea first. You can also just write up an outline or draft right away. |
jina-yoon
reviewed
Jun 5, 2026
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| 3. Open pull request of your draft in [posthog.com](https://github.com/PostHog/posthog.com). Blogs go in the [`/contents/blog` folder](https://github.com/PostHog/posthog.com/tree/master/contents/blog) (you can see the format from other blogs there). | ||
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| 4. Get review from someone from the <SmallTeam slug="editorial" /> and (optionally) a relevant teammate. |
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| 4. Get review from someone from the <SmallTeam slug="editorial" /> and (optionally) a relevant teammate. | |
| 4. Get review from someone from the <SmallTeam slug="editorial" /> and (optionally) a relevant teammate. If you're not sure who to ask from Editorial, ask in the #team-editorial Slack channel with a link to your PR. |
jina-yoon
reviewed
Jun 5, 2026
| 3. Journey: The investigation of what you tried, what failed, and what succeeded. Include the "takeaways" as part of the journey. | ||
| 4. Resolution: What actually changed? Give specifics, numbers, and/or visuals if you can. | ||
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| Use descriptive titles along the way rather generic ones like "Background" or "What we learned." If someone was skimming the piece, would the title give them the details they were looking for? |
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Suggested change
| Use descriptive titles along the way rather generic ones like "Background" or "What we learned." If someone was skimming the piece, would the title give them the details they were looking for? | |
| Use descriptive titles along the way rather generic ones like "Background" or "What we learned." If someone was skimming the piece, would the title give them the details they were looking for? | |
| ### Example blogs | |
| Here are a few engineering blogs from the past that got good traffic. You don't need to follow or copy any of them, this is just for ideas and inspiration. | |
| - [8 learnings from 1 year of agents – PostHog AI](https://posthog.com/blog/8-learnings-from-1-year-of-agents-posthog-ai) - Michael Matloka | |
| - [Untangling Tokio and Rayon in production: From 2s latency spikes to 94ms flat](https://posthog.com/blog/untangling-rayon-and-tokio) - Matheus Batista | |
| - [Karpathy's Autoresearch found a 3-year-old bug in our query engine (and improved performance by 11%)](https://posthog.com/blog/karpathy-autoresearch-query-engine-bug) - Robbie Coomber |
jina-yoon
approved these changes
Jun 5, 2026
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tiny edits + added a few examples of good eng blogs in the past
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As part of https://github.com/PostHog/company-internal/issues/3076, a handbook page about writing blogs for engineers.
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