Series
Founder notes
Why bhagol exists, argued in five essays by the founder. The trunk of the corpus: every other series proves some part of what these posts claim. Written by Ankit Sahu.
founder-notes
Why we are building bhagol
Bhagol is an astrology platform for India: computed charts, screened readings, fixed prices, refunds in writing. What we are building, and what we refuse.
founder-notes
How we screen astrologers
The check an astrologer has to pass before bhagol lists him: what gets read, what closes the file, and the failures no screening can catch.
founder-notes
Fear is not guidance
The scripts fear-selling runs on, taken apart line by line: the free report, the unnamed dosha, the manufactured clock, the seller who argues against the sale.
founder-notes
Computed, not composed
Determinism, append-only ledgers, screened readings, metered credits. Honesty in software is better engineered as an invariant than promised as a virtue.
founder-notes
Against engagement
What brings a reader back to an astrology product is usually whatever the last visit failed to settle. So bhagol counts opens and never aims at them.
founder-notes
Where are the intellectuals?
Educated Indians consult astrology privately and disown it publicly. The field lost its scholars to embarrassment, and the floor went to the loudest sellers.
founder-notes
What an honest reading looks like
An honest reading starts with a sentence the customer says out loud and ends with a line on what the chart cannot tell them. The rules we enforce on ourselves.
founder-notes
The refusal list
Everything bhagol will not build or sell, written down while refusing costs nothing: each refusal, the incentive that would break it, what we do instead.
founder-notes
Your birth details
What bhagol holds today is an email address, if you subscribe. Why a birth date, time and place identify you, and the rules fixed before we collect any.
founder-notes
Why there is no daily horoscope
The most requested thing bhagol will not build, argued instead of waved away: what a daily must become to fill its slot, and what twelve boxes can compute.
founder-notes
How we set a price
Why bhagol will price time, teaching and written work, never a fault or its cure, and where the numbers came from: a target divided by people, in public.
founder-notes
Why the arithmetic is open
What open computation means in practice: ephemerides named with their build, conventions stated exactly, and steps a stranger can redo without our help.