Colophon

This site is a Next.js App Router project. Every article — this one included — is an .mdx file in content/, read at build time and rendered on the server. Publishing is writing a file and committing it.

The stack#

Frontmatter#

Every file carries the same shape. Missing fields fail the build rather than rendering a blank page:

type Frontmatter = {
  title: string
  date: string      // ISO — "2026-08-28"
  summary: string
  tags?: string[]
  draft?: boolean   // keeps a file in the repo, out of listings
  updated?: string  // shown when newer than `date`
}

Constraints worth naming#

• One primary accent color, used only for links, tags, and small marks. One second, bounded colour — a warm copper tone — marks the subject noun in a pillar title, and appears nowhere else. Two colours total, not a palette.
• A reading measure of roughly 68 characters, enforced by a single utility.
• No component hard-codes a color or a font. Tokens or nothing.
• Sections are siblings in one collection, not separate apps.

The point of the constraints is that adding the fiftieth article should be exactly as cheap as adding the second.

A word on the pillar labels#

"Engineering" is the word every pillar title shares; the word in front of it is the only thing that changes. Snowpiercer's Wilford styled himself L'Ingénieur Éternel to a train that worshipped him for it. I'd rather the pillars made the same point without anyone having to worship anything — hence the colour, not the title.