~$ ls ./build-logs
Build log
Notes on shipping Next.js sites with AI tooling — what worked, what didn’t, and the specifics I’d want to read before starting.
- 7 min read
The CSS mask that cost my home page 400ms (and four wrong guesses first)
One route scored 91 while two others on the same site scored 98 and 97. Four plausible causes measured and disproved, the real one found by elimination — and the follow-up measurement that failed its own control.
performanceLCPCSSdebuggingCore Web Vitalsmeasurement - 5 min read
The hero fade that broke LCP (and how I actually diagnosed it)
A fade-in entrance kept the hero from being the early LCP candidate, so the metric latched onto a font-swap repaint at ~3.3s. The diagnosis, the fix, the rule it became — and the measurement that still doesn’t add up.
performanceLCPdebuggingCore Web Vitalswar story - 8 min read
How I ship a production site in 5 days
What actually makes a five-day build possible — the stack decisions, where AI helps, where I refuse to let it, and the checks a page has to pass before it goes live.
processworkflowAI-assistedNext.jsvelocityshipping - 3 min read
Shipping 3 Next.js sites in under 60 days
The actual weekly cadence, the stack I never changed, and what made the difference between week-1 demo and week-2 launch on every single project.
shippingworkflowNext.jsClaude Code - 4 min read
Claude Code + MCPs: my AI-assisted dev loop
Not the marketing-page version. The tools I actually run, how I decide which model gets which task, the gate that blocks a release, and where the human still has to think.
AIClaude CodeMCPworkflow - 3 min read
What I learned leaving RIT to build full-time
The decision, the math, the first two weeks of being on my own, and what I'd tell someone considering the same move.
careerdecisionsshipping