Building This Site With AI

I just shipped this site. Built it myself, as one person, in about a week of focused work.

Here’s how.

The Stack

Figma for design. I started there because I think visually and I needed to figure out what this thing should feel like before writing any code.

Hugo for the static site. Fast, simple, no JavaScript framework bloat. Markdown for content, Go templates for layouts, deploy anywhere.

Tailwind CSS for styling. I know some people hate it. I love it. Keeps me in the HTML, moves fast, easy to maintain.

Claude Code for… almost everything else.

How Claude Code Actually Helped

This is the interesting part.

I didn’t use Claude to “generate a website.” I used it as a collaborator. Someone to pair with who never gets tired and knows every API.

Here’s what that looked like in practice:

Setting up the project. I described what I wanted (Hugo + Tailwind), and Claude scaffolded the whole thing. Config files, directory structure, build commands. Would have taken me an hour of reading docs. Took five minutes.

Building components. I’d describe a component (“I need a card with an image, category tag, title, and description”), sometimes paste in a Figma screenshot, and Claude would write the HTML and Tailwind classes. I’d tweak from there.

Debugging. When something didn’t work (and things always don’t work), I’d paste the error and Claude would figure it out. Hugo template syntax is not intuitive. Claude knows it cold.

Refactoring. Once the site was working, I asked Claude to clean up repetitive code, extract partials, make things more maintainable. It did a better job than I would have done myself.

Content. Even these notes. I’d write a rough draft, Claude would help tighten the prose, fix awkward sentences, suggest better structures. Still my voice, but sharper.

What I Did Myself

Design decisions. Claude can execute, but it doesn’t know what mx.works should feel like. That’s still human territory.

Strategic choices. What pages to include, what to say, what to leave out. Claude can suggest, but the decisions are mine.

Quality control. Claude makes mistakes. Sometimes the code doesn’t work. Sometimes the suggestions are wrong. I had to review everything, test everything, catch the errors.

Taste. This is the hard one to articulate. Claude can write competent prose and functional code. But knowing when something feels right? That’s still on me.

The Takeaway

This is what AI-assisted development actually looks like in 2025. Not “AI builds your website.” More like “AI is a really good coworker who’s available 24/7 and knows everything.”

I’m faster with Claude than without it. Probably 3x faster on this project. But the work is still mine. The decisions are still mine. The taste is still mine.

That’s the balance I’m trying to strike with mx.works. Use AI to move faster without losing the things that matter.

If you’re curious about the process or want to see under the hood, let’s talk.