diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 5c0a7da..fa15122 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -110,8 +110,8 @@ export const ARTICLES_URL = new URL('/blog-content/articles/', location.origin).
 ## Adding an article
 
 An article is a single Markdown file placed directly in its author's directory. Its *file name*
-is where its publish date, tags, and draft status all live — not in separate files, and
-not in frontmatter. The format is:
+is where its publish date and tags live — not in separate files, and not in frontmatter. The
+format is:
 
 ```
 <slug>~<DDMMYYYY>~<tag1>+<tag2>+….md
@@ -129,9 +129,13 @@ The separator is `~` (tilde), not a hyphen — deliberately, since a slug is exp
 kebab-case (single hyphens only) and `~` isn't something you'd type by accident while writing
 one, unlike an extra `-`.
 
-A leading underscore on the whole file name — `_<slug>~....md` — marks the article as a
-**draft**: it's excluded from the list, search, and pagination, but still reachable directly by
-URL. Remove the underscore to publish it.
+**Drafts** aren't a file-naming convention — they live in a separate `draft/` subdirectory inside
+the author's own directory: `articles/author/draft/my-article~16062026~guides.md`. The crawler
+only ever reads `.md` files directly inside an author's directory, so anything under `draft/` is
+never indexed, listed, searched, or paginated. nginx should also deny access to every author's
+`draft/` folder outright (see "nginx configuration" below), so a draft isn't reachable by a
+guessed direct URL either — not just hidden from the crawl. To publish an article, move its file
+out of `draft/` into the author directory itself.
 
 Images (a cover photo, inline pictures) live in a `media/` folder shared by all of that author's
 articles, not next to each individual article file — so the same picture can be reused across
@@ -142,14 +146,15 @@ Steps:
 
 1. Create the author directory if it doesn't exist: `articles/author/`
 2. Create the Markdown file directly inside it, using the naming convention above, e.g.
-   `articles/author/my-article~16062026~guides+tutorials.md`
+   `articles/author/my-article~16062026~guides+tutorials.md` — or inside `articles/author/draft/`
+   instead, if it's not ready to publish yet.
 3. Optionally add a cover image to that author's shared `articles/author/media/` folder
    (creating it if needed), and reference it from frontmatter with `image: media/photo.jpg`.
 4. Add a frontmatter block at the top of the Markdown file
-5. Write your content — it will appear in the list automatically
+5. Write your content — it will appear in the list automatically (once it's out of `draft/`)
 
-To change an article's date, tags, or draft status later, rename its file — its content doesn't
-need to change. `author` is derived from the containing directory — no frontmatter field needed
+To change an article's date or tags later, rename its file — its content doesn't need to change.
+`author` is derived from the containing directory — no frontmatter field needed
 for it either. Treat the directory name as case-sensitive and exact: it's matched exactly (not
 case-insensitively) against `#author/...` URLs and author-profile lookups, so avoid two author
 directories that differ only in case. Because every one of these is encoded in the file name,
@@ -179,8 +184,8 @@ Your markdown content here...
 | `image` | no | Path to an image in the author's shared `media/` folder (e.g. `media/photo.jpg`); shown as card thumbnail and article hero |
 
 Reading time is computed automatically from the article word count — no frontmatter field
-needed. `date`, `tags`, and `draft` frontmatter fields, if present, are ignored — superseded by
-the directory name described above.
+needed. `date` and `tags` frontmatter fields, if present, are ignored — superseded by the file
+name described above.
 
 ## Author profiles
 
@@ -300,7 +305,7 @@ The site-level CSS files (`reset.css`, `header.css`, `layout.css`) are optional
 <div id="article-view" hidden></div>
 ```
 
-Place these wherever you want the CMS to appear. The router toggles `hidden` between them on navigation. A search box and tag/year filter lists are optional and can go anywhere else in the page — see "Search, article list, and tag list as independent pieces" below. Unlike those, `#list-view`/`#article-view` are both required — router.js checks for them at startup and shows a clear error (scoped to whichever of the two is present, or the whole page if neither is) instead of silently failing if one is missing.
+Place these wherever you want the CMS to appear. The router toggles `hidden` between them on navigation. A search box and tag filter list are optional and can go anywhere else in the page — see "Search, article list, and tag list as independent pieces" below. Unlike those, `#list-view`/`#article-view` are both required — router.js checks for them at startup and shows a clear error (scoped to whichever of the two is present, or the whole page if neither is) instead of silently failing if one is missing.
 
 ### 3. Script — before `</body>`
 
@@ -375,7 +380,10 @@ standalone.
 
 ## nginx configuration
 
-Point nginx `root` at the repo root. The `autoindex` directive applies recursively to all subdirectories under `/articles/`.
+Point nginx `root` at the repo root. The `autoindex` directive applies recursively to all
+subdirectories under `/articles/` — **except** each author's own `draft/` folder, which must be
+denied outright (see "Adding an article" above: this is what keeps a draft from being indexed or
+fetched by a guessed direct URL).
 
 ```nginx
 server {
@@ -388,6 +396,14 @@ server {
         try_files $uri $uri/ /demo/index.html;
     }
 
+    # Deny every author's draft/ folder outright — must come before the
+    # /articles/ block below (a regex location overrides a prefix location
+    # in nginx, so this still wins even though it's declared after it).
+    location ~ ^/articles/[^/]+/draft/ {
+        deny all;
+        return 404;
+    }
+
     # Enable JSON directory listing for article discovery (applies to all subdirs)
     location /articles/ {
         autoindex on;
@@ -409,9 +425,15 @@ computed as a sibling of the `js/` folder). Articles don't have to live there 
 under the same origin (or a different one, CORS permitting).
 
 Whatever it resolves to needs its own matching `location` block enabling the JSON (or HTML)
-autoindex — it doesn't have to be named `articles/` or nested under wherever cmkiss itself lives:
+autoindex, plus the matching `draft/` deny block (see above) — it doesn't have to be named
+`articles/` or nested under wherever cmkiss itself lives:
 
 ```nginx
+location ~ ^/blog-content/articles/[^/]+/draft/ {
+    deny all;
+    return 404;
+}
+
 location /blog-content/articles/ {
     autoindex on;
     autoindex_format json;
@@ -448,12 +470,14 @@ not built into stock nginx — only worth it if you're already building custom n
 
 Discovery happens in two phases. **Indexing** crawls `articles/` client-side to build a
 lightweight "stub" for every article — the author directories, then each author's own directory
-listing (their article files, bio file, and shared `media/` folder together) along with each
-file's `mtime`. Non-article entries (the author's own `{author}.md`, the `media/` folder) are
-simply filtered out of that same listing. That's it: because an article file's *name* already
-encodes its slug, date, tags, and draft status (see "Adding an article" above), that single
-listing is enough to sort, filter, paginate, and populate the sidebar's tag/year counts, without
-any further request per article and without ever fetching an article's actual Markdown.
+listing (their article files, bio file, shared `media/` folder, and `draft/` folder together)
+along with each file's `mtime`. Only `.md` files listed directly inside an author's own directory
+are kept as candidate articles — the bio file is filtered out by name, and any subdirectory
+(`media/`, `draft/`) is skipped outright rather than being descended into, so nothing under
+`draft/` is ever indexed. That's it: because an article file's *name* already encodes its slug,
+date, and tags (see "Adding an article" above), that single listing is enough to sort, filter,
+paginate, and populate the sidebar's tag counts, without any further request per article and
+without ever fetching an article's actual Markdown.
 **Hydration** is the separate, deferred step that fetches a specific article's content (title,
 description, cover image, reading time) — it only ever runs for articles about to be rendered:
 the current page's cards (`hydrateArticles()` in `js/discovery.js`), a single visited
diff --git a/js/discovery.js b/js/discovery.js
index dcbd7f9..69f37c9 100644
--- a/js/discovery.js
+++ b/js/discovery.js
@@ -98,10 +98,8 @@ let crawlStats = { total: 0, loaded: 0, authorsTotal: 0, authorsFailed: 0, rootF
 let partialResolved = [];
 const progressListeners = new Set();
 
-function sortAndFilterPublished(rawArticles) {
-    return rawArticles
-        .filter(article => article?.published && article.date)
-        .sort((a, b) => String(b.date).localeCompare(String(a.date)) || a.hash.localeCompare(b.hash));
+function sortArticles(rawArticles) {
+    return [...rawArticles].sort((a, b) => String(b.date).localeCompare(String(a.date)) || a.hash.localeCompare(b.hash));
 }
 
 // Subscribes to incremental crawl progress so a large site's article list
@@ -114,12 +112,12 @@ function sortAndFilterPublished(rawArticles) {
 // no longer showing.
 export function onArticlesProgress(listener) {
     progressListeners.add(listener);
-    if (partialResolved.length) listener(sortAndFilterPublished(partialResolved), false);
+    if (partialResolved.length) listener(sortArticles(partialResolved), false);
     return () => progressListeners.delete(listener);
 }
 
 function notifyProgress(done) {
-    const snapshot = sortAndFilterPublished(partialResolved);
+    const snapshot = sortArticles(partialResolved);
     progressListeners.forEach(listener => listener(snapshot, done));
 }
 
@@ -144,21 +142,23 @@ function excerpt(content) {
 }
 
 // An article file's own name is the sole authoritative source of its slug,
-// publish date, tags, and draft status — see the README's "Adding
-// an article" section. Format: `<slug>~<DDMMYYYY>[~tag1+tag2+…].md`,
-// optionally prefixed with `_` for draft. `~` (rather than e.g. "--") is
-// deliberate: a slug is expected to be plain kebab-case, and "~" isn't a
+// publish date, and tags — see the README's "Adding an article" section.
+// Format: `<slug>~<DDMMYYYY>[~tag1+tag2+…].md`. `~` (rather than e.g. "--")
+// is deliberate: a slug is expected to be plain kebab-case, and "~" isn't a
 // character anyone would type by accident while writing one — unlike a
 // double-hyphen separator, which collides with an easy slug typo (an extra
 // "-") and silently drops the whole article instead of erroring. Returns
 // null for any file name that doesn't match — callers treat that as a
 // silent skip, e.g. the author's own bio file or a stray unrelated file.
+// Drafts aren't a naming convention at all — they live in an author's own
+// `draft/` subdirectory (see the README's "Adding an article" section),
+// which the crawler never descends into (wave 2 below only reads `type ===
+// 'file'` entries from an author's own listing) and which nginx should deny
+// outright, so a draft is never indexed or fetchable in the first place.
 function parseArticleFileName(fileName) {
     if (!fileName.endsWith('.md')) return null;
     const base = fileName.slice(0, -3);
-    const draft = base.startsWith('_');
-    const core = draft ? base.slice(1) : base;
-    const [slug, dateSegment, tagsSegment] = core.split('~');
+    const [slug, dateSegment, tagsSegment] = base.split('~');
     if (!slug || !dateSegment || !/^\d{8}$/.test(dateSegment)) return null;
     const day = dateSegment.slice(0, 2);
     const month = dateSegment.slice(2, 4);
@@ -167,7 +167,6 @@ function parseArticleFileName(fileName) {
         slug,
         date: `${year}-${month}-${day}`,
         tags: tagsSegment ? tagsSegment.split('+').filter(Boolean) : [],
-        draft,
     };
 }
 
@@ -185,7 +184,7 @@ function parseArticleFileName(fileName) {
 function buildStub(author, fileName, mtime, authorRoot) {
     const parsed = parseArticleFileName(fileName);
     if (!parsed) return null;
-    const { slug, date, tags, draft } = parsed;
+    const { slug, date, tags } = parsed;
     const path = `${authorRoot}${encodeURIComponent(fileName)}`;
 
     return {
@@ -196,7 +195,6 @@ function buildStub(author, fileName, mtime, authorRoot) {
         mtime,
         date,
         tags,
-        published: !draft,
         hydrated: false,
     };
 }
@@ -322,7 +320,7 @@ async function runCrawl() {
     } catch {
         crawlStats = { total: 0, loaded: 0, authorsTotal: 0, authorsFailed: 0, rootFailed: true };
         notifyProgress(true);
-        return sortAndFilterPublished(partialResolved);
+        return sortArticles(partialResolved);
     }
     const authors = authorEntries.filter(entry => entry.type === 'directory' && !entry.name.startsWith('.'));
 
@@ -331,14 +329,16 @@ async function runCrawl() {
     // mtimes. This is what builds the flat, cross-author list that drives
     // global sorting and pagination — see the plan doc's "keep the flat
     // feed" decision. It's also the *only* per-author network request
-    // indexing ever needs: every stub field (slug, date, tags,
-    // draft status) is parsed straight out of each article file's own name
-    // (see buildStub/parseArticleFileName) — there's no per-article fetch
-    // at index time. The author's own bio file (`<author>.md`) and shared
-    // `media/` folder live in the same listing and are simply filtered out
-    // here — only `.md` files other than the bio file are candidate
-    // articles. One author's listing failing (network blip, deleted
-    // mid-crawl) is silently skipped rather than failing every other
+    // indexing ever needs: every stub field (slug, date, tags) is parsed
+    // straight out of each article file's own name (see
+    // buildStub/parseArticleFileName) — there's no per-article fetch at
+    // index time. The `type === 'file'` filter below also means any
+    // subdirectory (the author's shared `media/` folder, a `draft/` folder —
+    // see "Adding an article" in the README) is skipped without ever being
+    // descended into. The author's own bio file (`<author>.md`) is filtered
+    // out by name in the same listing — only `.md` files other than the bio
+    // file are candidate articles. One author's listing failing (network
+    // blip, deleted mid-crawl) is silently skipped rather than failing every other
     // author's list too, but is still counted, so a *total* breakage (wrong
     // origin, CORS) remains visible via getCrawlStats() instead of just
     // silently producing an empty article list.
@@ -374,7 +374,7 @@ async function runCrawl() {
     await pruneCache(allFiles.map(file => `${file.authorRoot}${encodeURIComponent(file.fileName)}`));
     crawlStats = { total: allFiles.length, loaded, authorsTotal: authors.length, authorsFailed, rootFailed: false };
 
-    const finalArticles = sortAndFilterPublished(partialResolved);
+    const finalArticles = sortArticles(partialResolved);
     notifyProgress(true);
     return finalArticles;
 }