A hacker deleted my 16 years of newsletters. The AI helped me get almost all of it back.
Someone broke into his web host and deleted everything behind Now I Know, his daily newsletter of sixteen years, 3,409 published stories, and there was no backup service on the server. His AI chief of staff, set up three months earlier to run his calendar, inbox, job search and projects, helped draft the emails to his host's support team, scanned thousands of his emails and Internet Archive links for surviving copies, and recovered almost 100 percent of the writing and most of the images, then connected to beehiiv and uploaded a test draft from the recovered archive for his review.
How it works
- The AI helps draft emails to the hosting company's support team to find databases the hacker left untouched
- It scans thousands of his emails for structured copies of stories
- It digs through Internet Archive links for lost photos
- Recovered stories are rebuilt, nearly 3,000 of them, and about 11,000 short links are checked one by one
- The AI connects to beehiiv, studies the recovered archive and uploads a draft for his review
Why it’s worth knowing
The system that saved sixteen years of work was not a backup. It was the assistant he had already connected to his inbox and projects for everyday jobs, turned into a recovery crew in the middle of a disaster.
Where it’s from
Summarized from a public post on thecommsstack.com. See the original ↗