This sample post demonstrates the components I want in a research-oriented technical blog: a readable long-form layout, equations, diagrams, code, tables, citations, and appendices.

Motivation

A useful research blog should make it easy to move from a rough idea to a durable public note. The source should remain plain Markdown so that it works well with editors, Git, and coding agents.

Research note. Keep posts focused on one technical claim or question. Treat the blog as an extension of your research notebook rather than a news feed.

Mathematics

Inline math works with dollar delimiters, for example $\pi_\theta(a_t \mid s_t)$.

Display math works too:

$$ \mathcal{L}(\theta) = \mathbb{E}_{\tau \sim \pi_\theta} \left[\sum_{t=0}^{T} \gamma^t r_t\right]. $$

You can also use LaTeX-style delimiters:

\[ a^* = \arg\max_{a \in \mathcal{A}} Q(s,a). \]

Mermaid diagrams

Use an ordinary fenced code block labeled mermaid:

flowchart LR
    U[User task] --> O[Orchestrator]
    O --> G[GUI agent]
    O --> C[CLI agent]
    G --> E[Environment]
    C --> E
    E --> V[Verifier]
    V --> O

Code

from dataclasses import dataclass

@dataclass
class Step:
    observation: str
    action: str
    reward: float


def choose_tool(state):
    """A deliberately small example for syntax highlighting."""
    return "cli" if state.get("structured", False) else "gui"

Tables

InterfaceStrengthTypical weakness
GUIVisual groundingExpensive interaction
CLIPrecision and speedWeak visual feedback
HybridFlexible routingRequires orchestration

Suggested article structure

For a substantial technical post, a useful default is:

  1. Motivation / problem setup
  2. Background and related work
  3. Core idea
  4. Method or system design
  5. Experiments / observations
  6. Failure cases and limitations
  7. Takeaways
  8. References
  9. Appendix

References

  1. Replace this with normal Markdown references, DOI/arXiv links, or a bibliography generated by your preferred workflow.
  2. For paper-like posts, consider adding a BibTeX citation block at the end.

Citation

@misc{research-blog-starter-2026,
  title  = {A Research Blog Starter: Equations, Diagrams, and Code},
  author = {YOUR NAME},
  year   = {2026},
  url    = {https://YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME.github.io/posts/hello-research-blog/}
}