I'm early in my AI journey, and this site itself has been one of the best places to practice. This post is a quick behind-the-scenes look at how it came together.
Starting from a plain static site
The whole thing is still just HTML, CSS, and vanilla JavaScript — no build tooling, no framework, no dependencies to keep updated. That was a deliberate choice: it keeps the site fast, keeps me in full control of every line, and keeps deployment as simple as copying files to a host.
Where AI actually helped
A few things stood out:
- Iterating on layout and design system decisions quickly, without having to hand-write every CSS rule from scratch
- Catching a real cross-browser bug (a Safari-specific repaint quirk with CSS custom properties) that I wouldn't have known to look for on my own
- Turning "here's roughly what I want" into a working first draft I could then refine
Where I stayed in the driver's seat
AI is a tool, not an autopilot. Every design decision — colors, tone, what pages exist, what the Impressum needs to say under German law — came from me. The AI helped execute faster; it didn't decide what to build.
The interesting part of working with AI isn't handing off the thinking — it's getting to iterate on the thinking much faster.
What's next
This blog itself is a good example: it's a small file-based system — write a Markdown file, run one build command, done. No database, no server to maintain. Simple enough that I can keep extending it as I learn more.
If you want to see the rest of the tools I'm using, check out the AI Journey page, or get in touch if you want to talk shop.