How this site updates itself
This site isn't a brochure maintained on the side — it's an output surface of the same operating system it describes, run by the same rules: drop a file and it's a page, promote a piece with one command, and a weekly pass keeps it honest.
Adding a page here is a one-file change; a /promote command turns a workspace artefact into a guardrailed page; a sync step reconciles the live numbers with their source; and every push deploys itself. It's deliberately not fully automatic — the editorial and privacy gates are the point — but drift has a scheduled catch.
The honest problem with a personal site is that maintaining it is a separate job from doing the work — so it goes stale. This one is built to avoid exactly that. It isn't a brochure kept on the side; it's a surface the operating system publishes onto, governed by the same rules as everything else. Maintaining it isn't extra work — it's the same work, pointed outward.
Drop a file, get a page
The engine is a publishing pipeline. Every page under Work, Systems and Notes is a single markdown file with a few lines of metadata at the top; the build reads the folder and turns each one into a page — no new code, no template wrangling, no CMS. Adding a write-up is the same motion as writing a note. When publishing costs that little, keeping the site alive stops being a project and becomes a habit.
One command to promote
Writing the file correctly — the right metadata, the house voice, the privacy lines held — is itself a small skill, so it's encoded as one: a /promote command. Point it at a workspace artefact (a lesson, a system, a piece of shipped work) and it drafts the page, runs it through the same communication-review gate every other output passes, checks it for anything that shouldn't be public, and shows it to me before a word is written. Approve, and it's a page. This explainer was published that way.
A sync step that catches drift
Some of what's here is a snapshot of live workspace state — the capability levels, the counts — and snapshots go stale. So /promote has a second mode that reconciles those against their source of truth, flags whatever has drifted, and fixes it on approval. It runs as part of the weekly review, so the outward-facing version of me can't quietly fall out of date. Levels and counts sync; the hand-written reasoning, and anything private, deliberately don't — see a system that knows who it's for.
Push, and it's live
The last link is mechanical. A push to the repository deploys the site on its own — no manual release, no separate publish button. What you're reading is whatever was last approved and pushed, usually minutes earlier.
What's deliberately missing
Notice that nothing auto-publishes. The pipeline is fast, but a person still approves every page and every sync — because the parts that need judgement (is this the right framing, is it safe to show, is it still true) are exactly the parts you don't hand to a machine. The site updates itself in the mechanical sense and stays honest in the editorial one, and the distance between those two is the whole design. A page describing that principle, published by a process that follows it, is about as close to showing instead of telling as a website gets.