I’ve been experimenting with a small project called DirectFlow.

Right now it looks like a simple podcast app, but the original idea behind it was actually much broader. At first, DirectFlow was an experiment around the idea that people should be able to follow websites directly, without depending so heavily on platforms, directories, or centralized systems in between.

The idea was simple: paste almost any website URL into a form, and the application would try to discover machine-readable flows directly from the website itself. RSS feeds, Atom feeds, JSON feeds, and other things websites already expose in their HTML metadata.

But while building it, I realized something important: most people do not naturally think in terms of “following websites directly.” It is still not a familiar user experience outside of a few technical communities.

Podcasting, however, immediately stood out as a place where this problem is very real.

Subscribing to podcasts today is still strangely complicated compared to the rest of the modern internet. Usually you need to search inside a specific app, rely on podcast directories, or manually deal with RSS feeds that normal users were never supposed to think about in the first place.

At the same time, the underlying infrastructure already exists and already works surprisingly well. Most podcast websites already expose feeds automatically. RSS already works. Open podcasting already works. The problem is mostly the user experience around it.

So I decided to intentionally narrow DirectFlow down to podcasts for now.

Today the idea is intentionally simple: you paste a podcast website URL into DirectFlow, scan a QR code, or share a link into the app — and DirectFlow automatically discovers the podcast feed and subscribes you to it.

No searching through directories.

No explaining RSS.

No copying feed URLs manually.

No platform lock-in.

Just follow the podcast directly from its website.

The current version is still very experimental, but it already supports both audio and video podcasts. If a feed contains playable audio or video enclosures, DirectFlow can detect them and play episodes directly inside the app.

At some point I also realized that my own definition of podcasting had become much simpler than many industry discussions around it. To me, a podcast is basically just an open feed with playable enclosures. That’s it. If a feed contains playable audio or video files, applications should be able to discover it, subscribe to it, and play it.

I also started using the word “flow” instead of only “feed,” because it feels broader and more correct for what I’m experimenting with. A feed is a technical format. A flow is more like a relationship between a website and an application.

Some of these ideas later evolved into another small project called QRX, which experiments with discovering machine-readable flows from normal URLs and QR codes. I wrote a bit more about that separately already.

Right now DirectFlow is mostly a place where I experiment with podcast UX ideas in public. Maybe some of these ideas eventually become part of a bigger standalone application. Maybe some of them simply help existing podcast apps become better.

Either way, I think podcast subscriptions should feel much more natural than they do today.

I’ve been working with podcasts for many years now, both technically and creatively, and one thing I’ve seen again and again is how much friction still exists around subscriptions.

I’ve had to explain RSS feeds to listeners countless times. I’ve had to explain how podcast apps work, how to copy a feed URL, where to paste it, why some apps behave differently, why searching sometimes fails, why a podcast appears on one platform but not another, and so on.

And every extra step loses people.

You can literally watch listeners disappear during the subscription process. Someone gets interested in a podcast, but before they actually subscribe, they already have to understand too many things that normal users should never have to think about. RSS feeds, directories, platform differences, search indexing, manual imports — all of this still leaks into the user experience.

That’s one of the main reasons I started building DirectFlow.

And honestly, I think I may have finally found a very simple solution to this problem.

Imagine if podcast apps like Pocket Casts, Apple Podcasts, Fountain, Overcast, or others simply added a QR scanner inside the app itself. A person scans a QR code from a podcast website, poster, video, or screen — and the app immediately discovers the podcast feed and subscribes them natively.

Or imagine someone simply pasting a podcast website URL into a podcast app, and the app instantly showing the podcast page and follow button automatically, without requiring the user to understand RSS at all. That changes the entire subscription experience.

The really interesting part is that subscriptions would finally happen directly through the podcast’s actual open feed itself, instead of depending entirely on platform-specific IDs, internal databases, or centralized discovery systems.

The infrastructure already exists. Most podcast websites already expose their feeds publicly. Applications simply need to discover and use them more naturally. I think it will be very interesting to watch how podcast subscriptions evolve from here.

Podcasting has been a huge part of my life for a long time. I’ve created podcasts myself, worked with podcasters, built podcast-related tools, explained podcast infrastructure to companies and creators, and spent years thinking about how open podcasting actually works underneath the surface.

I’m even writing a book about podcasting right now because I think there are still many things about this medium that people outside the industry do not fully see yet.

That’s also why DirectFlow is not just a random experiment for me. It comes from years of seeing the same UX problems repeat over and over again, and finally trying to build a simpler approach around the infrastructure podcasting already has.