I needed a place online to organize my thoughts and share my writing. I knew exactly what I didn't want: a clunky, traditional CMS. I wanted a good framework, but I wanted it on my own terms.
While hunting for design inspiration, I stumbled upon calv.info. The design immediately clicked with me, and I decided to use it as the blueprint for my own site (huge credit to Calv.info for the inspiration!).
The Build Process
I'm already comfortable in Visual Studio Code, so I fired that up and installed Node.js. But here is where the AI heavy-lifting came in.
I took screenshots of the different pages from calv.info to map out the layout. Then, using the Claude Code plugin right inside VS Code, I had the AI generate the site's code based on those images. Claude essentially built the website for me.
To manage my content, I use Obsidian on my desktop to write everything in clean Markdown. I also draft longer pieces in Google Docs — once I'm happy with the writing, I download it as a Markdown file and update it directly into the website. The best part? If an idea strikes while I'm on the go, I can just open the GitHub mobile app, edit the text right there, and commit the changes on the fly. Once everything is tied together, the repository is updated on GitHub.
Deployment
I host the site on Vercel, which makes updates incredibly satisfying. Whenever I write a new post or tweak the code and push a commit — whether from my laptop or my phone — Vercel catches it instantly. Within 60 seconds, my live site is updated.
In the end, I bypassed the standard CMS route and built exactly what I needed using Node.js, VS Code, Claude, Obsidian, GitHub, and Vercel.