The lab · How I built this site

How I builtthis site.

I could have sent you a CV. I'd rather show you the process.

AI has become part of how I work every day. A black and white CV can't show that. So I planned, wrote and built this site myself, with AI as my sidekick and me making every call.

I learned by building, a little every day, and by practising each new thing the moment I learned it. Strategy is about to change a lot. This is what that change looks like in practice.

01 · The pipeline

From skeleton to live, with a hand on it the whole way.

I drift between two tools. The thinking happens in one, the build in the other. Red marks the calls I make myself.

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Skeleton

Sections, pages and what goes in each. Quick to do, and it sets up everything after.

I decide: The structure

I decide

02 · The rulebook

0 rules

When something goes wrong and takes ages to fix, I ask why it happened. The answer becomes a rule in a guidelines file, so it doesn't happen again. The file grows with every mistake.

These are real rules from building this site.

CLAUDE.md · how I work

# How we work together

# Added after: a full case study got built before I'd finished explaining it- Never jump ahead. One step at a time, and only when I say.

# Added after: a colour palette was treated as decided- Black and white until I say otherwise. Content first, colour last.

# Added after: personal background crept into the brief- No personal details. This is about how I work, not my life story.

# Added after: nearly every first draft- No em dashes. No jargon. Short sentences that trust themselves.

# Added after: a video showed up blank in the preview- Every video gets a poster frame, so nothing is ever empty.

# Carried over from: the Matey build- Never guess a value. An empty field is honest. A guess is not.

# Added after: copy that claimed the human in the loop instead of showing it- Show it, don't claim it. Real builds, real screens, real people in the loop.

03 · The receipts

Real screens from this project.

The brief, the case studies, black and white drafts.

The brief, version 6, rewritten as each decision landed — **The brief** · version 6, rewritten as each decision landed

A case study, the real build, in black and white first — **A case study** · the real build, in black and white first

The team page, the planning cycle, with people in red — **The team page** · the planning cycle, with people in red

The log, five posts and counting — **The log** · five posts and counting

The stack

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I don't write code.

I build.