Shipping the prototype

This is a build log. It exists so future-me remembers what choices were intentional and what choices were lazy.

What we kept

1. Bun + TypeScript. No bundler. Bun runs .ts directly.
2. Block-based pages. Each page is a list of typed blocks. Adding a block type is one function.
3. Design tokens + CSS vars. Theme JSON becomes :root variables and utility classes. No CSS-in-JS.
4. Prose variants. Long-form blog content gets .prose-article — distinct typography rhythm vs. marketing pages.
5. Color schemes. A section opting into data-scheme="dark" re-skins every nested element. Zero per-block overrides.

What we cut

• Markdown. Posts are HTML strings inside JSON. Markdown can be added with a loader later.
• Blog index / archive. Each post renders standalone. Cross-linking via menus.
• Asset pipeline. Images are URLs. No resizing, no responsive srcset.
• Dev server with watch. Build + open. That's plenty for now.

What surprised me

The smallest version that's worth using is much smaller than I think it should be.

A static site generator is mostly: read JSON, concatenate strings, write files. The interesting design work is the theme contract — what tokens exist, how they reference each other, how composite styles compose. Once that's right, blocks become almost incidental.

Numbers

What's next

• Markdown loader for post bodies
• RSS + sitemap
• Blog index with pagination
• Dev server with watch + live reload

Read the first post to see what the article variant looks like in practice.