Section Applied AI

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03 / Applied AI

This Portfolio Site

The site you are reading — built with AI assistance under constraints strict enough that the build fails rather than ships something hollow.


Role
Architect & developer
Stack
Astro · TypeScript · Claude Code
Year
2026
Language
Astro

A gate that never fails is decoration.

Draft

AI-assisted build Fast, and not yet trusted

Gate

Contrast WCAG AA, both themes
Completeness No lesson, no exhibit
No invention Unsupplied facts are omitted

Decide

Non-zero exit The build refuses rather than ships

Publish

What survived
Build gates — what the site refuses to publish

The problem

A portfolio site is now trivially generatable, which is exactly why one no longer proves anything. A site that anyone could have produced in an afternoon is evidence of nothing — least of all for someone whose work is building AI systems other people are asked to trust.

Why it mattered

Claiming to build trustworthy AI systems while shipping a site indistinguishable from generated filler is an argument that undermines itself. The portfolio had to be the first piece of evidence, not a container for evidence about everything else.

What I built

A static Astro site built with AI assistance and governed by gates that fail loudly. A contrast gate checks every ink-on-ground pair the site actually uses against WCAG AA in both themes and exits non-zero on a miss. A completeness gate refuses to publish an exhibit with no lesson. Nothing depictive ships unless it is a real document or generated from real data, and any fact not supplied is omitted rather than guessed. The assistance drafted fast; the gates decided what survived.

What I learned

AI assistance is only as good as what is allowed to fail. Given no constraints it produces something plausible. Given constraints that reject work automatically, it produces something that had to earn its place. The judgment is in what you refuse to ship, not in how much you can generate.