ThingSource is a daily digital publication that uncovers the fascinating, surprising, and often accidental origins of everyday things. From the foods we eat to the words we say and the customs we follow, we deliver one curious origin story directly to your inbox every morning, helping you see the familiar world through a lens of historical wonder.

How It Works

Our autonomous daily publication loop runs seamlessly behind the scenes:

1. Research: The system crawls reputable history databases and online archives to discover unique historical topics while avoiding duplicates.
2. Write: Generative AI analyzes the historical data to draft an engaging, editorial-style article complete with fun facts and verified citations.
3. Publish: The codebase commits updates directly to our static web files, launching an automated build and publishing the story online.
4. Email: The new story is immediately compiled into a beautiful newsletter and distributed to all active subscribers.

About Arman Ayva

ThingSource was founded and engineered by Arman Ayva, a creator and technology enthusiast based in Quebec, Canada, who is passionate about building autonomous software and digital publications. Besides writing code and managing agentic workflows, Arman creates original ambient music and electronic soundscapes.