I built this site with AI, and I want to show my work

This site exists because I finally had a domain, a VPS, and no excuse. Rather than agonize over a design system for a month, I built it in an afternoon with an AI as a pair — and because “building things with AI” is one of the things I want to write about, it seemed only fair to start by documenting this.

The stack, and why

Nothing here is exotic, which is the point:

• Astro for a static site. It ships no JavaScript by default but lets me drop an interactive demo into a post exactly where one earns its place.
• Markdown / MDX for writing, so posts are just files in a Git repo. No database, nothing to patch at 2am.
• A hand-rolled force-directed graph for the interactive bits, because my favorite posts are about graphs and I wanted the site itself to be made of the thing it’s about.

Where we disagreed

The interesting part of building with AI isn’t the code it writes — it’s the places you have to overrule it. A running list, to be continued as I add posts:

• It reached for heavier libraries than the job needed. I kept saying “smaller.”
• It wanted a cookie banner and analytics I didn’t ask for. Given the day job, I care about this; the site tracks nothing by default.

What’s next

Building in public means the unfinished parts are part of the record — more on that as it happens.