How this site was made

This site is intentionally simple: plain HTML, CSS, and a little JavaScript where a page needs to move. There is no heavy framework hiding behind the curtain, no database, no elaborate build pipeline. The point was to keep the surface area small enough that I could understand it, change it, and publish it without turning writing into software operations.

The design started with a reference point: the editorial feel of nytimes.com. Not the whole product, obviously, but the typography, hierarchy, confidence, and restraint. Claude Design helped turn that reference into a visual direction for a personal site: serif-forward, mostly black and white, quiet navigation, and enough room for the writing to do the work.

Claude Code built the first version of the site structure. It laid down the static pages, the shared stylesheet, and the first interactive post, Your life in weeks. That post is the reason I like this setup: every page can be its own small HTML document, with its own CSS and JavaScript if the idea calls for it.

The domain is registered at Squarespace, but the site itself is hosted on Cloudflare. GitHub hosts the source of truth for the pages, and Cloudflare serves the deployed version from that source. That split keeps ownership, code, and hosting cleanly separated.

Codex came in at the end, which is where the boring but important work lives. It helped connect the custom domain, move the DNS records off the old Squarespace parking page, verify the Cloudflare Worker routes, and harden the GitHub repository before I shared it publicly. The main branch now requires a pull request and an approval before changes can land.

What I like about this stack is that it stays humble. A post can be just words. A post can also contain a grid, a calculator, a visualization, a tiny game, or whatever else the argument needs. The site does not have to become an app for a page to become interactive.