Lab · Experiment 001
Can AI replace a CMS?
This site used to run on a GoDaddy website builder. Now it runs on a written brief, an AI pair-programmer, and a design system instead of an admin panel — and this site is the experiment.
Problem
How might we
Replace a traditional CMS with an AI-native publishing workflow — without sacrificing consistency, control, or speed?
Hypothesis
An AI pair-programmer can replace a traditional CMS for a personal website if the site has a sufficiently strong design system and version-controlled workflow.
Experiment
Build the entire site without a traditional CMS.
Every page on this site — this one included — ships through the same five-stage pipeline.
Brief
Plain language: what should change, and why.
AI
Claude writes the real HTML, CSS, and copy.
Design System
Nothing new gets invented from scratch.
Git
A real, permanent, reviewable commit.
Deploy
Live automatically, in about a minute.
Results
Evidence, not adjectives.
Worked: using Claude as the pair programmer works fabulously!
Failed: context is critical and drift happens when there isn’t enough context
Evidence · Receipt 01
Input
TBD
Outcome
TBD
Conclusion
The hard part wasn’t teaching AI how to build the site. It was deciding what should be built in the first place.
What I learned: AI is increasingly capable of execution. The human advantage is moving upstream — toward judgment, taste, identity, and deciding what’s worth building.
Next Experiment
Should “Ask Dr. Paul” become an avatar?
Talking avatar, text chatbot, or shelved entirely — that’s the question this experiment created.
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