About SimplyKnown
one operator, a handful of small tools
SimplyKnown is a workshop, not a startup. Everything under this domain is built and run by one person, and every project on it started as a problem that was annoying enough to solve properly.
Where it started
A channel, then the machine that feeds it
The public part of SimplyKnown is @simplyknownfacts: short-form history and science videos, about a minute each, one story at a time. A Roman legion that vanished. Why a particular bridge fell down. The patent nobody read until it mattered.
Making those by hand is slow in a very specific way — the writing is the fun part and the assembly is not. So the assembly got automated, one stage at a time, until it became its own project: the Video Creator pipeline, which carries an idea through script, narration, artwork, animation, sound and captions, pausing for a human decision at every gate that matters.
Other tools followed the same route. A spreadsheet for finding rental property became an app that scores listings against a buy box. A pile of quotes and purchase orders became a small ERP. A toddler who needed something safe to hold became a tablet with a walled garden in it. None of them were built to be sold. They were built because the alternative was doing the work by hand forever.
What is open
Two doors are unlocked
Most of these tools are private, because they hold one operator's business and family data and there is no reason for anyone else to be in them. Two are open to anybody:
- The TikTok posting tool — it moves a finished video file from the device you are sitting at into your own TikTok drafts. It was built for this workshop's own shorts, and the problem it solves is not unusual, so it is public and free.
- The topic board — suggest a subject for a future short and upvote the ones you want made. The most-wanted ideas get built.
Neither asks you to create an account here. There is no SimplyKnown login, no newsletter, and no payment form anywhere on this site.
How it is built
Small, plain, and boring on purpose
Every page on simplyknown.co is static HTML and CSS — no build step, no framework, nothing that quietly breaks eighteen months from now. They are served from Cloudflare's network. The few things that genuinely need a server are small single-purpose functions rather than one large application sitting behind everything.
The same instinct explains the data choices. The posting tool has no user database because it does not need one: your connection to TikTok lives in a cookie in your own browser and expires on its own. There is no analytics script, no ad network, and no cross-site tracker on this site. Less stored means less to lose.
Being straight about it
What SimplyKnown is not
- Not a company with staff. One person answers the email, writes the code, and reviews the videos.
- Not affiliated with TikTok. The posting tool uses TikTok's public developer APIs, the same as any third-party app. There is no partnership or endorsement.
- Not a marketing service. Nothing here schedules posts, buys reach, farms engagement, or automates an account.
- Not pretending the videos are hand-drawn. The narration, artwork and animation are machine-generated and reviewed by a person before publishing. The history is real; the pictures are illustrations.
Get in touch
One inbox, one person reading it: simplyknownfacts@gmail.com. Bug reports, corrections to a video, privacy requests and questions about the posting tool all land in the same place — the contact page says what to include so the reply is useful the first time.