I frequently share tools and links on X/Twitter and sync them over to my Telegram channel. After seeing Austin mention he was building a site to aggregate his past shares, I remembered the Sepia template I had recently seen and wondered if I could turn my Telegram channel into an automated microblog.
It turned out to be fairly straightforward—I knocked out the core features over a single weekend. The fun part was achieving zero client-side JavaScript. Here are some interesting CSS tricks used along the way:
- Spoiler overlays and mobile search toggle: Built purely with the CSS
:checkedpseudo-class and the+adjacent sibling combinator. (Reference) - Page transitions: Handled via CSS View Transitions without client routers. (Reference)
- Image lightbox: Built using the native HTML
popoverattribute. (Reference) - Back-to-top button: Toggled dynamically using CSS
animation-timeline(supported in Chrome 115+). (Reference) - Masonry image grid: Laid out using CSS Grid masonry. (Reference)
- Visitor analytics: Tracked with an ancient web trick—a 1x1 transparent tracking pixel embedded behind the logo.
- Strict zero-JS enforcement: Guaranteed by sending
Content-Security-Policy: script-src 'none'. (Reference)
Once it was working, I open-sourced it. I did not expect it to resonate so much—it gained over 800 stars in its first week.
If you want to try it out, check out the repository on GitHub: