The Problem

I want to read all the amazing articles I find, but do not have the time.

Read-It-Later

I use Linkding to manage my bookmarks and by extension, articles I want to read later. I’ve set up my RSS feed for adding links and also a bookmarklet to quickly add from the browser.

Read it later lists are aspirational and fall to the same fallacy as gaming backlogs. It is where I store things I think I’ll enjoy if I have the spare time. Spoiler: there is never going to be enough time.

I am a parent of two young kids and in my 30s, my attention and down time is limited. Especially if I want a clean house, to try to stay healthy, keep my job, and be a passable parent.

I do not get time to read at the volume I aspire to.

Text to Audio

Most everything I “read” is actually through audio form. I am able to get through 20 to 30 audiobooks a year this way, and I’m a very heavy user of podcasts.

The Libby app is amazing for free audiobooks from your local library.

I am afraid this reliance on audio is making me alliterate. But that is neither here nor there.

Recently on Hacker News I saw a post about 11Reader . 11Reader uses text-to-speech to read any given url, ebook, or pdf. It has helped me get through a lot of articles since using it last week.

My Dream Application

What I want to build:

  • Allow me to flag and article to “turn into audio” in my RSS reader or my instance of Linkding
  • The url is sent to a text to speech service API
  • The article is converted into an audio file by LLM
  • Post the audio file to an RSS feed which I can subscribe via my podcatcher

I’m pretty sure all the pieces exist for this workflow. I just want to set aside time to do it.