Memento Mori Obituary Comics

A Next.js archive for daily obituary comics about deceased people who faced death and made significant work afterward.

Production site: https://www.finalnotes.page/

Cloudflare Worker: https://finalnotes.yashygkf.workers.dev/

Repository: https://github.com/megabyte0x/memento-mori-obituary-comics

Public resource links

These are the main public citation targets for readers, librarians, journalists, and teachers:

• Obituary stories and articles
• Obituary articles as reported life stories
• How to write an obituary story
• Obituary research guide
• Press and source-request resources

Repository citation map: public obituary citation resources.

Maintainer surface

This project is maintained as a small open-source publishing system. The repo includes:

• a Next.js App Router archive and comic reader
• private Cloudflare R2 media storage with stable public /media/... URLs
• Cloudflare Image Transformations for R2-backed comic JPG/PNG covers and pages
• an x402-paid GET /api/latest-pdf endpoint for agent-accessible PDF delivery
• regression tests for R2 delivery, x402/latest-PDF behavior, upload tooling, and comic data

Each comic gets a durable permalink:

/comics/<slug>/

Development

pnpm install
pnpm dev

Useful checks:

pnpm test
pnpm build
pnpm preview

The app uses the Next.js App Router. Route and UI ownership is:

• app/page.jsx for the archive homepage.
• app/comics/[slug]/page.jsx and components/reader-shell.jsx for the reader.
• app/media/[...path]/route.js for private R2 media delivery through stable /media/comics/... URLs.
• app/about/page.jsx for editorial method.
• app/press/page.jsx for editors, reviewers, backlink outreach, and citation resources.
• app/api/latest-pdf/route.js for the paid agent PDF endpoint.
• app/robots.js, app/sitemap.js, and app/llms.txt/route.js for discovery files.
• app/globals.css for design tokens and component styling.

Add a generated comic

Comic metadata lives in comics.json, with per-comic source metadata under comics/<slug>/comic.json. The checked-in archive is the local editorial record; production reads the signed catalog/comics.json manifest in the private finalnotes-comics R2 bucket. Rendered media remains behind /media/comics/<slug>/...; R2 is never public.

python scripts/add_comic.py /path/to/generated-output \
  --slug new-comic-slug \
  --person "Name" \
  --title "Title" \
  --years "1900-2000" \
  --dek "Short description" \
  --event "Mortality event" \
  --sources "Source A; Source B"

Validate metadata without generating static HTML:

python scripts/add_comic.py --render-only

Publish a staged comic through the signed production route and private R2:

pnpm comic:publish -- --slug <slug>

The command validates metadata, uploads and verifies only that comic's media, signs the complete metadata with ~/.config/finalnotes/blob-upload-ed25519.pem, and writes the R2 catalogue last. It then checks the reader, homepage, sitemap, and llms.txt. It does not rebuild or redeploy the Worker. The legacy scripts/deploy_latest.sh /comics/<slug>/ command delegates to this publisher for compatibility.

The Worker verifies the shared signing authority against FINALNOTES_BLOB_UPLOAD_PUBLIC_KEY and writes stable keys such as comics/<slug>/pages/01-<slug>.jpg. A failed or partial upload is invisible because the catalogue manifest is the final release switch.

On this machine, older ignored binaries may still exist locally. Always pass --slug for a new release so only that comic is uploaded.

Substack newsletter

The public newsletter surface is Borrowed Time Dispatch at:

/newsletter/

The connected Substack publication is:

https://finalnotes.substack.com

Launch copy and first-issue materials live in:

docs/newsletter/substack-publication-profile.md
docs/newsletter/substack-launch-checklist.md
docs/newsletter/issue-001-borrowed-time-dispatch.md

Cloudflare deployment

The app runs on Cloudflare Workers through the OpenNext adapter. wrangler.jsonc binds the private finalnotes-comics R2 bucket, and open-next.config.ts packages prerendered routes into Workers Static Assets.

pnpm cf-typegen
pnpm test
pnpm build
pnpm preview

For the one-time runtime-catalogue release, seed the existing editorial archive before deploying the Worker code that reads it:

pnpm comic:seed-catalog
pnpm deploy

After that release is live, use pnpm comic:publish -- --slug <slug> for future comics; do not run pnpm deploy for normal comic publication.

Create the R2 bucket once with pnpm exec wrangler r2 bucket create finalnotes-comics. Set X402_PAY_TO, CDP_API_KEY_ID, CDP_API_KEY_SECRET, and FINALNOTES_BLOB_UPLOAD_PUBLIC_KEY as Worker secrets. Public NEXT_PUBLIC_* values must be available during the Next build and in Cloudflare Workers Builds.

Keep the R2 bucket private; original image bytes are served by the application /media route. The standard pnpm deploy command enables production responsive delivery: the Worker IMAGES binding transforms streamed R2 objects into WebP through /optimized-image/<width>/75/..., while the route falls back to the original R2 bytes if transformation is unavailable. pnpm deploy:images remains an alias for this command. Both deployment modes preserve existing Worker variables.

After every optimized deployment, probe a generated URL for Content-Type: image/webp, X-Finalnotes-Image-Transform: images-binding, and immutable cache headers, then confirm homepage and reader HTML contain responsive /optimized-image/... candidates. If the binding path fails, use pnpm deploy:originals to emit original R2 image URLs while investigating. Local pnpm preview also emits original URLs.

For a source-reviewed metadata correction to a comic that already exists in R2, use a signed metadata-only publication. The API revalidates the full GEO contract and checks every declared asset before replacing the catalogue entry:

pnpm comic:publish -- --slug <slug> --metadata-file /absolute/path/to/comic.json --metadata-only

Publication verification checks the reader's title, authored introduction and every page summary, plus its canonical link on the homepage, sitemap and llms.txt. Full introductions in llms.txt are required for comics listed under Latest issues; older comics remain discoverable through their archive links without duplicating the complete reader introduction.

Paid agent PDF endpoint

Agents can request the latest comic PDF at:

GET /api/latest-pdf

The endpoint uses x402 and requires an exact 0.1 USDC payment on Base mainnet (eip155:8453) before returning the PDF bytes.

Production deployments must set:

X402_PAY_TO=0xYourReceivingWallet
CDP_API_KEY_ID=your-cdp-key-id
CDP_API_KEY_SECRET=your-cdp-key-secret
FINALNOTES_BLOB_UPLOAD_PUBLIC_KEY=your-ed25519-public-key-pem