A short log of how this blog was built, start to finish, in a pair-programming session with Claude Code.

What was built

  • Hugo + GitHub Pages: a static site that deploys automatically on every push to main via GitHub Actions.
  • A self-contained minimal theme: hand-written templates and CSS with no external theme dependency.
  • Bilingual by default: English at the root (/) and Japanese under /ja/, with a language switcher and hreflang tags for SEO. Content files always carry an explicit .en.md / .ja.md suffix.
  • Affiliate scaffolding: shortcodes for inline links, product cards, language-aware Amazon links, and AdSense units; an automatic disclosure banner for posts flagged affiliate = true; a privacy policy page; and hook points for Amazon OneLink.
  • Operations docs under docs/ (writing guide and affiliate setup), kept out of the published site.

Fixes made along the way

  • Updated the GitHub Actions to Node 24-compatible versions to clear a deprecation warning.
  • Applied a design refresh (a warm “sand” accent, Noto Sans JP + IBM Plex Mono), then a couple of follow-up tweaks.
  • Fixed a CSS specificity bug where the main content padding was being overridden.
  • Fixed unreadable code blocks: the syntax-highlight style was a dark-background theme sitting on a light background, so the code text was nearly invisible. Switched to a light theme.

A note on transparency

This site was built collaboratively with Claude Code (Anthropic’s coding agent). The commit history records each step. If you’re curious how an AI-assisted build actually goes, the short version is: lots of small, reviewable pull requests, each one built and checked before merging.