A colophon is a page about how something was made. Books used to include them. Websites sometimes do. This is mine.
From 2018 to 2022, I recruited, interviewed, and hired hundreds of engineers at Apptegy. I sat across the table from people who built things for a living and asked them to describe their craft. After a few hundred of those conversations, I wanted to understand what they meant. So in 2020 I started building this site.
I picked Gatsby because a friend recommended it. I wrote some of the code myself and hit a wall pretty quickly (I am not an engineer). Luis Puente helped me build out the earliest version. Regina Lara took my design ideas and turned them into reality. I kept the content updated but left the infrastructure alone for years.
By 2025, that caught up with me. Gatsby was being sunset. The blog CMS had been deprecated. The guts were aging out quietly while I wasn't paying attention. Ben Orozco helped set things right in January 2026, and I owe him for that.
In April 2026, I rebuilt the site using Claude Code, refactoring everything from Gatsby to Astro. I should say clearly: Claude Code changed what's possible for someone like me. Updating the site used to mean texting an engineer friend and hoping the ask was small enough to not feel like a favor. Now I can do it myself, which is a kind of freedom I didn't expect to care about as much as I do. Moving to Astro made the site snappier, the builds faster, and the overall weight lighter.
I'm proud of the scores. Perfect marks for best practices, SEO, and accessibility. Performance sits at 97 to 99 out of 100 most of the time. For someone who learned to code by building a personal website, those numbers feel like a small victory.
I picked Gatsby because a friend recommended it. I wrote some of the code myself and hit a wall pretty quickly (I am not an engineer). Luis Puente helped me build out the earliest version. Regina Lara took my design ideas and turned them into reality. I kept the content updated but left the infrastructure alone for years.
By 2025, that caught up with me. Gatsby was being sunset. The blog CMS had been deprecated. The guts were aging out quietly while I wasn't paying attention. Ben Orozco helped set things right in January 2026, and I owe him for that.
In April 2026, I rebuilt the site using Claude Code, refactoring everything from Gatsby to Astro. I should say clearly: Claude Code changed what's possible for someone like me. Updating the site used to mean texting an engineer friend and hoping the ask was small enough to not feel like a favor. Now I can do it myself, which is a kind of freedom I didn't expect to care about as much as I do. Moving to Astro made the site snappier, the builds faster, and the overall weight lighter.
I'm proud of the scores. Perfect marks for best practices, SEO, and accessibility. Performance sits at 97 to 99 out of 100 most of the time. For someone who learned to code by building a personal website, those numbers feel like a small victory.
The design hasn't changed much since the beginning, and I think that says something. Two ideas have guided it from the start: minimalism and connection.
Minimalism means simple fonts, clean colors (with day and night mode variations), and enough white space to let the content breathe. I've added pages over the years, but the bones are the same. I like a site that looks like someone made it on purpose and then knew when to stop.
Connection is what makes the site feel like mine. The homepage updates every half hour with a line that starts "Tyler Vawser is..." and changes based on the day and time. Saturday at 8am: picking up cinnamon rolls. Monday at 8am: planning the week. It's a small thing, but it makes the site feel like it's breathing.
When I refactored in April, I leaned further into connection. The homepage now invites you to tell me what you're doing or to ask a question. It's anonymous (unless you choose to set up a time to connect). I wanted a simple way to create understanding between two people who might never meet otherwise. The internet used to be good at that.
Minimalism means simple fonts, clean colors (with day and night mode variations), and enough white space to let the content breathe. I've added pages over the years, but the bones are the same. I like a site that looks like someone made it on purpose and then knew when to stop.
Connection is what makes the site feel like mine. The homepage updates every half hour with a line that starts "Tyler Vawser is..." and changes based on the day and time. Saturday at 8am: picking up cinnamon rolls. Monday at 8am: planning the week. It's a small thing, but it makes the site feel like it's breathing.
When I refactored in April, I leaned further into connection. The homepage now invites you to tell me what you're doing or to ask a question. It's anonymous (unless you choose to set up a time to connect). I wanted a simple way to create understanding between two people who might never meet otherwise. The internet used to be good at that.
Framework: Astro
Hosting: Netlify
Blog CMS: Decap
Build partner (2026 refactor): Claude Code
Infrastructure rescue (January 2026): Ben Orozco
Original build (2020): Luis Puente (development) and Regina Lara (design)
Design philosophy: Minimal, connected, handmade
Hosting: Netlify
Blog CMS: Decap
Build partner (2026 refactor): Claude Code
Infrastructure rescue (January 2026): Ben Orozco
Original build (2020): Luis Puente (development) and Regina Lara (design)
Design philosophy: Minimal, connected, handmade
If you have a personal website, I'd love to see it. The best ones feel like someone's living room. I hope this one does too.