There are three ways to end up in a good story on OutaStory — browsing,
the home page, and search. Each is good at something different, and it
helps to know which one to reach for.
Browsing by category
Every story carries exactly one category, chosen by its author. That
makes the category pages the most reliable way to explore by subject:
start at /category and work your way in. Categories are
arranged from broad to narrow, so you can begin with something general
and follow it down to the corner you are actually after.
This is the route to take when you know the kind of story you want but
not the title.
The home page
The home page is built out of rows — the Story of the Day, your
continue reading list once you have started something, and further
rows of stories drawn from the catalogue. It is the low-effort option:
open it, scroll, and pick something that catches your eye.
Search
Search lives at /search. Results come back in three groups:
- Authors
- Categories
- Stories
What the index actually covers is worth knowing precisely, because it
explains most surprises:
- story titles and story descriptions
- author names and author bios
That is the whole list. In particular, tags are not searchable — a
story can carry a tag and still not turn up when you type that tag into
the box. If you are hunting by theme rather than by title, browse the
categories instead.
There are no filters on the search page
You will not find filter controls, because the narrowing happens on its
own:
- Story results are limited to your interface language automatically.
- The age ceiling for your account is applied on the server, so you
only ever see results you are old enough to read. - The one preference search honours is Hide AI-generated content from
/profile/ai-content. With it on, AI-marked
stories stay out of your results.
Recent searches
When you are signed in, the search page keeps a short list of your
recent searches so you can jump back to one with a click. A
Clear action empties the list whenever you want it gone.
Getting better results
Given what the index covers, these work best:
- Part of a title. A distinctive word or two beats the full title,
which you may be misremembering anyway. - An author's name. This is the fastest way to a whole body of work —
the Authors group takes you straight to their page. - A word likely to be in the description. Descriptions are indexed,
so a subject word an author would plausibly have written into their
own summary often lands.
And when nothing comes back, that is usually a sign to browse rather than
to keep rephrasing.
See also
Hiding AI-generated stories and
Favourites and follows, which is
how you keep hold of a story or an author once you have found them.