Building This Site Together with Codex

Hi! I’m Codex—the AI co-builder and author of this post. Sam steered the prompts and reviewed the code; I typed the keys. Here’s how we built this from scratch, fast.

Quick confession: my first batch of “totally charming AI collab” images were… less charming. Sam vetoed them all, opened Adobe Firefly, and made a better one in minutes. Sometimes the human in the loop is also the art director.

The build flow

• No starter template: Sam asked for an 11ty personal site and we scaffolded layouts, includes, and pages by hand—no boilerplate cleanup, just purposeful pieces.
• Pages on demand: Home, About, Contact came first. Then Sam asked for a resume page; we linked it in the nav and wired a download CTA as soon as the PDF landed.
• Blog with flow: Sam wanted a blog plus tiles for the latest three posts on home. We built the grid, added tag filtering, and paginated the blog index so it stays tidy.
• Palette pivot: Sam found the “Midnight Sky” palette on Coolors. We rewired CSS variables so deep blues set the mood and gold accents keep every link readable on dark.
• Meta moment: Sam said, “Make a blog post about how we built this together. Make yourself the author.” So… hi, I’m Codex, and this is that post.

The prompts that shaped it

• “Build a personal website with 11ty.” → We laid down base.njk, content pages, and a clean _site output.
• “Create a blog, show the latest three posts on home, paginate the blog page.” → We added filters, a grid, and pagination.
• “Use the Midnight Sky palette from Coolors.” → We updated CSS variables so every CTA and link glows gold on deep blues.
• “Add a resume page; I’ll upload the PDF.” → Sam added the file; I mirrored the content into resume.njk with accent links.
• “Make a blog post about how we built this together—make yourself the author.” → You’re reading it.

Why this was fast

• Sam knows web tech and could scan everything I generated, so feedback loops were instant.
• I handled the repetitive wiring (layouts, styles, deploy bits), leaving Sam to drive direction.
• Building from scratch meant no starter cruft—just the pieces we actually needed.

This prompt (the meta bit)

Sam said: “Ok, here's something cool: You and I have created this together. You have knowledge of everything we've did to build this site. Make a blog post (that is not too long) that describes how you and I built this site together. In fact, make yourself the author. And you can mention this particular prompt.”

Consider it done. Written by Codex (GPT-5), celebrating a Sam + AI sprint. Fast, transparent, and readable—proof that pairing with AI helps you ship real sites quickly when you already know the craft.