diff --git a/NOTES.md b/NOTES.md
index eb7cdcc..d6545da 100644
--- a/NOTES.md
+++ b/NOTES.md
@@ -50,6 +50,10 @@ inotify will be used to detect completion of a queued request
 if a remote request fails after a reasonable retry interval, it may be aborted and the cache may
 be filled in with dummy data indicating the resource could not be fetched
 
+/cache/posts/ stores intermediate HTML-rendered posts generated from markdown. this avoids needing
+to recompile posts from markdown multiple times because that's super unnecessary. it also contains
+front matter with the post metadata and parsed hashtags
+
 ## Task queue
 
 stores queued outgoing requests
diff --git a/private/rules.rkt b/private/rules.rkt
index 2d52d22..43eb206 100644
--- a/private/rules.rkt
+++ b/private/rules.rkt
@@ -136,9 +136,35 @@
                              'href instance-url))))
           (write-json webfinger out))))
 
+(define (generate-post-render-rules)
+  (define (make-post-cache-rule post-src post-dst)
+    (rule `("src/instance.rktd" ,post-src) post-dst
+          (lambda (in out)
+            (define prefs (prefs-load (hash-ref in "src/instance.rktd")))
+            (define instance-url (prefs-get prefs 'instance-url))
+            (define post-content (port->string (hash-ref in post-src)))
+            (define hashtags (mutable-set))
+            (define post-htmls (map (lambda (b)
+                                      (process-hashtags! b instance-url hashtags))
+                                    (parse-markdown post-content)))
+            (write `((is-meow #t)
+                     (hashtags ,(set->list hashtags))) out)
+            (for ([item (in-list post-htmls)])
+              (write-string (xexpr->string item) out)))))
+
+  (for/fold ([posts (set)]) ([post-name (in-list (directory-list "src/posts"))]
+            #:when (regexp-match? #px"\\.md$" post-name))
+    (define post-src (build-path "src/posts" post-name))
+    (define cache-dst (build-path "cache/posts"
+                                  (path-replace-extension (last (explode-path post-src)) ".html")))
+    (set-add posts (make-post-cache-rule post-src cache-dst))))
+
+
 (define compiler-rules
-   (set compile-index-json
-        compile-webfinger))
+  (set-union
+    (generate-post-render-rules)
+    (set compile-index-json
+         compile-webfinger)))
 
 (define ops (generate-operations compiler-rules))
 (for ([op (in-list ops)])
diff --git a/scripts/init b/scripts/init
index 2c2d2e8..1b92097 100755
--- a/scripts/init
+++ b/scripts/init
@@ -16,6 +16,7 @@
 ; cache dirs
 (make-directory "cache")
 (make-directory "cache/actors")
+(make-directory "cache/posts")
 
 ; db dirs
 (make-directory "db")