Why this site exists (and why it was built in an afternoon)
First entry -
Long time developer, but recently ‘leveled-up’ with the advancements in AI assistance. The uncomfortable truth about the current state of creative work: “made with AI” reads as “low effort” to a lot of people, and sometimes they’re right. The answer isn’t to hide the tool. It’s to show the work.
So this site has one structural rule: every finished thing links back to the log entries that built it. Design decisions, rejected options, scope cuts, failure modes.
Some notes on this first build, in that spirit:
- Stack: Astro. The site is markdown files rendered to static HTML, a devlog entry is literally a file dropped in a folder. Next.js was considered and rejected: there’s no server logic here, and shipping a React runtime to render text is overkill.
- Scope: five pages and a play directory. There’s a well-known trap where a personal site becomes a “digital garden” with bidirectional links, confusing navigation, exciting UI elements for the sake of having them, and zero published entries. I took exactly one idea from that world (the seed/growing/evergreen badge you see on entries) and fenced off the rest.
- Process: scoped in conversation with an AI against my own project notes, scaffolded by the AI, reviewed and directed by me. Total elapsed time: one session.
Setting this site up in one afternoon - basically free. Having a working developer’s log to track progress - priceless.