This site: turning a portfolio into something honest and alive
Built on Next.js + Vercel not as a brochure, but as a place to be honest about what I built, what broke, and what I learned.
Why I built it this way
Most portfolios waste time: big visuals, vague claims, and a lot of copy before you learn what someone actually shipped.
This site is strict on purpose: one line should tell you why something matters; the rest is proof for people who want it.
The goal isn’t to pitch. It’s to leave a trail of real work — what worked, what was ugly, and what changed.
What broke (and why it confused me)
Big recurring confusion: Vercel vs GitHub vs my brain.
More than once I was clicking “Visit” on an old deployment and assuming the code hadn’t updated, when I was just on a stale URL.
I also ran into “not reflecting” moments that were MDX issues: a couple of characters and math-y formatting broke the content build, so Vercel rolled back.
The lesson: keep MDX clean and watch build logs instead of assuming deploys are magic.
Tone shift that mattered
I had to get comfortable with ‘projects as conversations.’
These pages are not pitch decks. They’re me talking through what I tried, what worked, what was ugly — then a technical appendix for people who care about the plumbing.
Why the log exists
I didn’t want a dead portfolio.
This is the running timeline of how the fleet optimizer, the manufacturing system, the thesis, the dashboard, and the site itself evolved.
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