Feed Flow
Three public surfaces from the same signed-out session: Explore, the Technology category one click in, and the About page. Watch two things across them. First, what the feed is made of — the trending block is a row of saved searches, and 'Top' inside a category means Notes, with the publications' actual articles filed behind a third tab called Posts. Second, where the primary button points: at every level the orange one recruits a writer and the grey one lets a reader in.
Explore, signed out
The advertised URL is /browse; it redirects to /explore, and what loads is not a directory of publications. Thirty-three category tabs run across the top, clipped mid-word at Sports. Below them the lead unit is a news block — a video card reading 'NBC News crew attacked', then Trump Venezuela Oil Deal, FBI Hiring Rules, Nuclear Threats Rise, each with a thumbnail. None of those link to a post. Every one is a /search/ query with utm_source=trending-topics on it, so the top of the discovery page is a set of pre-typed searches dressed as headlines. Under them sits a horizontal strip of Notes. The left rail offers the whole signed-in product — Home, Subscriptions, Chat, Activity, Profile — inert for a visitor, with one live orange button, Create. The right rail is where the ranking shows: a card headed 'Log in or sign up' whose first control is the orange 'Start your Substack' and whose second is a grey 'Sign in'. The reader is the fallback path on the reader's own login card. New Bestsellers, five publications with Subscribe buttons, is the only list of publications on the screen.