---
type: "article"
title: "Summer Update"
summary: "Lots of goodies!"
newsletter: "Commune"
newsletter_handle: "commune"
newsletter_url: "https://newsletter.usecommune.com/"
author: "Commune (@commune)"
published: "2026-09-02T21:00:45.863Z"
canonical_url: "https://newsletter.usecommune.com/a/n94RWRrX"
markdown_url: "https://newsletter.usecommune.com/a/n94RWRrX.md"
chat_url: "https://newsletter.usecommune.com/a/n94RWRrX/chat"
body_source: "native"
likes: 1
replies: 3
body_words: 748
---

# Summer Update

Well, first and foremost...

**This email was written in Commune, and sent from Commune.**

That sentence took me about 4 months to earn, and it's only the first thing on this list.

I spent the summer building. Here's all of it 👀

![](https://fmxorstnlyoqpqdftivs.supabase.co/storage/v1/object/public/article-images/322818b7-1883-4237-97d0-2fdf27637893/0c266466-e43a-4d31-8b18-8f3d906de53e/1788379716358-zz5v8ji2.gif)

You can write your newsletter here. Lay it out, brand it, drop in tables and images, schedule it, send it, watch how it did.

And Commune reads over your shoulder before it goes out. No cover image? It says so. Broken image link? Caught. Personalization tag that won't fill in? Caught. Footer you deleted by accident and legally need? Caught. All of it before you hit send.

Already publishing somewhere else? Keep doing that. This sits next to your setup, not on top of it.

## Highlights: the best thing your readers do

This one is our favourite, and it's the piece most people haven't found yet.

![](https://fmxorstnlyoqpqdftivs.supabase.co/storage/v1/object/public/article-images/322818b7-1883-4237-97d0-2fdf27637893/0c266466-e43a-4d31-8b18-8f3d906de53e/1788380975471-qp4fth44.gif)

Drag over any sentence in an issue. A little menu appears with two choices: **Highlight** it quietly, or **Quote** it, which pulls that exact passage into the conversation as a quote.

Your readers are collectively marking up your writing, and you can see, at a glance, the sentences that actually landed. The specific words people stopped on.

Then the interesting part happens on its own. Every highlight is automatically shared in the feed as a quote card. Your readers become the people quoting you.

You've been telling people what your best lines are. Now your readers tell you.

## Your feed stopped being a bulletin board

I deleted the wall between "posts" and "conversations." There was never a good reason for it.

Now everything on your feed is something people can talk in. Your issues. The lines readers highlight while they're reading. Threads your community starts on their own. You decide what's public and what stays in the room, and when a thread gets good you can lift it onto the feed where everyone will see it.

Your newsletter goes out. The conversation stays.

## The discussion moved next to the writing

Not on another page. Not in a Discord you have to talk people into joining.

Right there, beside the paragraph.

![](https://fmxorstnlyoqpqdftivs.supabase.co/storage/v1/object/public/article-images/322818b7-1883-4237-97d0-2fdf27637893/0c266466-e43a-4d31-8b18-8f3d906de53e/1788381200919-vh47e7iz.jpeg)

Someone highlights a sentence and argues with it. Someone else replies. You jump in without opening a new tab. The piece and the conversation about the piece finally live in the same place, which is where they always should have been.

## Bring your own domain. Both of them.

**Your email** goes out from your address, on your domain. Not ours.

**Your newsletter's home** lives at `newsletter.yourdomain.com`, or whatever you want it to be. Not a Commune URL with your name bolted onto the end.

Your archive. Your audience. Your domain. If you ever want to walk, you can walk, and take all of it with you. I'd rather earn you staying.

Do you have a newsletter? [Check it out](https://usecommune.com/dashboard/domains).

## AI assistants can read your newsletter now. They can't train on it.

People don't only search anymore. They ask. "*Any good newsletters about X?*" "*What did they say about Y last month?*" If your work isn't legible to those tools, you simply don't come up.

So every public page on Commune is now available in a form assistants can read directly.

**But read and train are two different things, and I split them on purpose:**

**Read it? Yes.** An assistant can pull up your issue, use it to answer someone's question, and link back to you. That's a reader arriving at your page who never would have found you.

**Train on it? No.** Your writing does not become training data. No credit, no link, no undo. That one isn't mine to hand out on your behalf.

I declare this in the standard machine-readable way crawlers check. It's a stated position, not a padlock, and I'd rather say it out loud than quietly leave the door open.

See it here: [https://usecommune.com/robots.txt](https://usecommune.com/robots.txt). The line in question is:

```plaintext
Content-Signal: search=yes, ai-input=yes, ai-train=no
```

## (Coming really soon) API and MCP

![](https://fmxorstnlyoqpqdftivs.supabase.co/storage/v1/object/public/article-images/322818b7-1883-4237-97d0-2fdf27637893/0c266466-e43a-4d31-8b18-8f3d906de53e/1788382096124-4zpm2sd8.gif)

I've been building a real public API, plus a way to plug Commune straight into assistants like Claude.

Which means soon you'll just ask:

*"How did my last issue do?"*

*"What is my community actually talking about?"*

*"Who's drifting away?"*

And get a real answer, from your own data, in plain language.

It's close. Veeeery close.

***

That's the summer so far.

What excites you the most? Let us know in the chat :)

***

## Discussion (3 replies)

Numbering shows the reply tree: `2.1` is a reply to `2`. Message text is reproduced verbatim as posted.

### 1. Fran Mendez (@fmvilas) - 2026-09-02T21:12:48.335Z

Tons of new things in the platform. It's been a busy summer 😅

### 2. Kin Lane (@kinlane) - 2026-09-02T21:57:56.301Z

What is an API?

### 3. Fran Mendez (@fmvilas) - 2026-09-02T23:38:16.552Z

Well, I'm glad that you ask, API stands for Antifascist People Institution. Please don't ask me what's MCP 🤣