---
title: "Newsletter Engine With Substack Sections And Notes"
description: Build a lightweight newsletter system that turns shipping notes, customer questions, and founder perspective into a weekly issue.
sidebar_position: 13
---

# Newsletter Engine With Substack Sections And Notes

In this tutorial, you'll build a newsletter system that fits a tiny software
team. The objective is not to publish "content". The objective is to turn the
work you already do into a weekly issue people actually want to read.

## Why This Workflow Exists

The research pointed to a few repeatable patterns:

- behind-the-scenes and founder perspective beat polished-but-empty updates
- one publication can support multiple targeted sections
- short-form distribution matters, not just the full email
- a weekly system beats sporadic hero efforts

## What We're Building

Here's the flow:

1. collect raw inputs during the week
2. turn them into one issue with clear sections
3. generate short distribution assets for Substack Notes, LinkedIn, and X
4. keep the whole system on a weekly reminder cadence

## Prerequisites

Before starting, make sure you have:

- HybridClaw running locally
- a publishing destination such as Substack, beehiiv, Kit, or your existing
  email stack
- at least one weekly source of truth, such as a release note, customer call,
  issue list, or founder memo

If you use Substack, the official docs are useful here:

- Sections let you target a subset of your audience
- Notes let you restack or share short-form updates
- Live video can notify subscribers when you go live

## Step 1: Decide Your Repeating Sections

For a lean software team, a practical structure is:

- `What we shipped`
- `What we learned from users`
- `Founder note`
- `What to try this week`

If you want cleaner targeting in Substack, create sections such as:

- `Release Notes`
- `Founder Notes`
- `Tutorials`

That keeps technical readers and broader GTM readers from receiving the exact
same thing every week.

## Step 2: Build The Weekly Issue

At the end of the week, prompt HybridClaw with the raw inputs:

> 🎯 **Try it yourself**
>
> ```text
> Use @file:CHANGELOG.md plus the relevant issue notes and founder notes for this week.
> 
> Draft a weekly product newsletter.
> 
> Audience:
> - technical founders
> - operators
> - small teams evaluating automation or developer tools
> 
> Sections:
> 1. What we shipped
> 2. Why it matters
> 3. One founder observation
> 4. What to try next
> 
> Tone:
> - sharp
> - practical
> - mildly opinionated
> - no empty launch language
> ```

Then ask for supporting assets:

> 🎯 **Try it yourself**
>
> ```text
> Now create:
> - 3 subject line options
> - 1 short Substack Note
> - 1 LinkedIn post
> - 1 X post
> ```

## Step 3: Add A Weekly Reminder

Use a simple reminder so the system does not depend on memory:

> 🎯 **Try it yourself**
>
> ```text
> /schedule add "0 9 * * 5" Remind the team to assemble this week’s newsletter inputs: release notes, customer questions, founder observations, and one thing worth trying.
> ```

## Best Team Split

For a five-person team:

- Founder 1: weekly founder note
- Founder 2: product accuracy
- Founder 3: distribution and comments
- Teammate 4: gather raw inputs
- Teammate 5: final formatting and send

## Best-Practice Notes

- **Section discipline or no sections at all.** Substack sections only
  pay off if every section publishes on a predictable cadence. Two
  consistent sections beat five intermittent ones; half-empty sections
  read as abandoned and train readers to skip.
- **Specificity is the founder voice.** "We're excited to share" is
  generic CEO energy and tanks open rates. "I was wrong about X last
  month; here's what we learned" is the exact kind of sentence people
  actually forward to a colleague.
- **Track replies more than clicks.** Opens and clicks measure
  reach; replies measure relationship. A newsletter with a 2% reply
  rate is worth more than one with a 50% open rate and zero
  conversations.

## Production Tips

- make each issue answer one clear question: what changed, what matters, what
  should readers do
- keep the founder section personal and specific
- turn every issue into at least one short-form post
- use one recurring weekly pillar and batch the short-form cut-downs from that
- keep the issue tied to one funnel job: awareness, activation, retention, or
  expansion
- archive each issue and its source inputs in
  [Notion or Obsidian](../skills/memory-knowledge.md) so next quarter's
  "best of" issue writes itself

## Going Further

- [Web Search](../../reference/tools/web-search.md)
- [Quick Start](../../getting-started/quickstart.md)
