Behind the scenes
How I built this
I made the product calls, Claude Code wrote the code, and I learned what every piece does along the way.
Why a website, not just a resume?
A resume is a list of claims. This site lets you see how I think: case studies for my reasoning, the blog for my opinions, this page for my decisions. And it's one long page on purpose: scroll, and you see everything.
Why it looks like this
There are thousands of portfolios out there with huge animations, 3D scrolls and flashy graphics. They look cool. This one doesn't try to, and that's on purpose.
Before designing anything, I locked six rules:
- 01Familiar frame, distinctive content.
- 02A 10-second skim for anyone, depth for those who dig.
- 03Proof beats adjectives.
- 04One signature moment, not ten.
- 05Calm reads as credible.
- 06Speed is design.
Two of them killed most of the flashy ideas. Speed: most of you are reading this on a phone, coming from LinkedIn, and every effect is extra loading time. One signature moment: the phone card lighting up is the only show-off. Everything else gets out of the way.
Flashy says “look what I can do.” I'd rather you remember what I think.
Buttondown → Beehiiv → Kit
I went through Buttondown, then Beehiiv, before landing on Kit. Kit was the one that fit: type your email, click once, done. You never leave this page.
My first backend
To make that work, I built a small backend: it takes your email, checks it's a properly formed address, and passes it to Kit. I didn't become an engineer, but I now know what one means by “the API returns a 500.”
The email that never arrived
My first test email never showed up, not even in spam. I was sending it “from” my college address through Kit's servers, and my college's security blocked it as a likely fake. The fix was owning a domain. So I bought vinamra.cc, and the next test landed.
I tested my own site like a product
I had the site reviewed through the eyes of different kinds of visitors. The verdict: too much jargon. So everything got a plain-English pass.
Built with Claude Code
I'll be upfront: Claude Code wrote the code. I made every product decision and pushed back when something felt off (more than once). I'm not trying to be an engineer. I'm a PM who can take an idea to a live product without waiting on anyone.
Stack:Next.jsVercelKitHostingerImprovMX