Public Profiles and Shareable Developer Cards

This release adds public reader profiles and shareable developer cards, making it easier to showcase what you are reading and the technologies you care about. It also tightens up a few related UI behaviors so sharing and onboarding feel more consistent.

Now Available: Public profiles and developer cards

You can now claim a username and publish a public profile at /users/<username>. Profiles include identity details, a biography, social links, grouped technologies, and durable UTC-based reading activity like streaks and heatmaps.

Developer cards are now shareable and embeddable from Profile settings, including download controls, Copy Link, and a Markdown embed option. Cards are also available as a standalone endpoint at /api/v1/users/<username>/card.svg, with social preview images for sharing.

Privacy is respected: private or unavailable profiles return 404, so they do not appear publicly. Avatars used in cards are safely fetched and embedded to keep rendering reliable across platforms.

Quality of life updates

The guest card reveal now waits until you have spent at least 30 seconds on the site, and signup drafts are preserved so you can pick up where you left off. Introduction modals and the dev card modal also no longer dismiss on outside clicks, reducing accidental interruptions.

Reading statistics on the developer card can refresh without overwriting unsaved profile edits. The avatar menu was also simplified to keep only Profile settings, and the shared Usage dropdown is used for consistency.

Article cards now have a corrected hit area, and article images can be enriched from marked lead figures to better reflect key visuals when available.

Topics are now classified using canonical kinds, making topic labeling more consistent across the product.