About rcmnd
rcmnd collects what named people recommend in public: books, hardware, software, services, podcasts and courses. Each entry is their own words, quoted, with a link to the public post where they said it.
The rule the site rests on is a verbatim quote and a source link, or it is not here. An entry without a source link is refused when it is added, and nothing is paraphrased. Framing we add is kept apart from the quote.
Where the recommendations come from
Public reading lists and recommendation pages. Personal sites that keep a list of what their owner recommends, such as Patrick Collison's bookshelf or Derek Sivers' book notes, are imported by scripts that read the page. Each script maps the page's own marks to a verdict: a star or a rating is "loved" or "liked", and a book that only sits on a shelf is "read". Where the owner says an unmarked entry is not a recommendation, it is not imported. The lists themselves are under Lists.
Blogs, newsletters, podcasts and interviews. Gathered by hand and with AI-assisted research. Every quote is checked word for word against the source before it is added.
Posts on X. For people whose X account is verified on the sibling site ppll, a program reads their recent posts every two hours. A language model points at a sentence that recommends something, and the program then accepts it only if that sentence appears character for character in the post, exactly once, with the thing's name inside it. The model never writes a quote. The one field it may fill from its own knowledge is who made the thing (the author of a book, the maker of a tool), and that field is not covered by the check.
Book covers come from Open Library, and people's pictures from their own accounts through the sibling sites' picture service.
What the labels mean
The verdict is what they actually said. "Loved" and "liked" are explicit. "Recommended" means they told others to get it. "Uses" means they only say they use it. A paid or affiliate relationship that the post disclosed is shown as a label beside the quote, never hidden.
Corrections and removal
Quotes get misattributed and things get mixed up. Every recommendation has a “Wrong?” link beside its source; it opens a short form that reaches a person. For anything else, use the feedback form.
If you are quoted here and want an entry corrected or removed, write to hello@ppll.app. rcmnd has no mailbox of its own; that is the sibling site ppll's address, and it reaches the same person. You can also claim your page on ppll.
The sibling sites
rcmnd is one of three sites with the same rule. ppll records where a person publishes, and korrents what they believe. Privacy says what a visit to rcmnd records.