First Draft Feed

First Draft Feed is a WordPress block that renders a single post’s revision history as a readable, chronological feed. Each revision is a “moment” — timestamped, with a visual diff showing what changed. Readers follow the evolution of thinking, not just the finished product.

Who is this for?

• Writers who work in public and want to expose how their thinking evolved.
• Readers who want to follow a post’s development over time like a story.
• Site owners who want to control which posts expose their drafts and how much history is visible.

How it works

Drop the First Draft Feed block onto any post or page. It renders a feed of that post’s revision history, pulled from a custom REST API endpoint that safely surfaces WordPress revision data without requiring authentication.

Each revision card shows:

• Timestamp — when the revision was saved
• Word count delta — e.g. “+ 312 words”
• Visual diff — additions and removals highlighted in context, rendered as clean text (no raw HTML diffs)

The feed loads oldest-to-newest so readers experience the post as it was written.

Features

• Per-post opt-in — revisions are only exposed when the author explicitly enables the feed
• Author notes — optional context shown at the top of the feed
• Three diff styles — inline, split, or summary view
• Image tracking — images in revisions are preserved and diffed alongside text
• Collapsible cards — readers expand only what interests them
• Max revision limit — cap how many revisions appear (1-50)
• Toggle individual elements — show or hide diffs, word counts, and timestamps
• Block supports — wide/full alignment, background/text color, spacing, and font size

Source Code

The full source code is available on GitHub:

https://github.com/jnealey88/first-draft-feed