How it is built
Four disciplines run through the build. Every consequential step is played back to me and confirmed before anything is built; the one recorded exception is told below. The content lives in one source document. A mechanical check runs on every build: a register of banned names and identifiers, and a gate that fails any build still carrying one. And the logs are meant to be kept as the work happens.
They were not always kept. Sessions in July and August 2026 landed changes without a log entry. An audit on 29 July found the July gap and reconciled it; an audit on 28 September found the August gap, which was recorded there but not yet reconciled.
Decisions are kept as records. When the deliverable changed in the middle of the build, in June 2026, the change went in as four new decision records, every earlier record it affected was marked as replaced, and the reasoning of no old record was edited.
Versions, kept and never deleted
One version is live at a time, and a single file names it. Promoting a build is one line in that file; rolling back is the same line reversed. No version is deleted: to retire one, its status changes and the pointer moves.
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An offline, single-file site, built on 6 June 2026 from the source document. Retired and frozen on 7 June, when the plan became one public site on my own domain
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Hand-built in plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Live at adriaanmostert.com from 10 June 2026, and still the live site on 29 September 2026
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The move to Astro, on 16 June 2026. Parked at its skeleton and kept on disk
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A greenfield rewrite, decided on 4 July 2026 and finished on 20 July 2026 in eight gated phases
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Built and never deployed. Its own release checks stopped it on 28 September 2026
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Begun on 17 October 2026, to rebuild the site in my own brand
Gates before anything ships
A gate is a point where the work stops until its checks pass and I say go. Version 3 was built in eight phases, each passed before the next opened; the first capture of its chapters showed three composition defects, which were fixed and captured again. Version 4 was handed over in eight gated phases too, with a pause at every gate.
The same order applies to the system's own shortcuts. On 14 June 2026 a first attempt at new web effects skipped the written brief and built four enhancements straight onto a working copy. I stopped it for going to build before the experience was scoped. The work was rolled back, kept as a prototype, and run again in order: the brief, the architecture, the screens, then the build.
The check that stopped a release
On 2 August 2026 the records said the build was ready to deploy, with one step left: my go. When a team took the release up again in September, its own checks stopped it.
On 28 September 2026 a check traced every figure on the site back to its source text. The site said 12 plugins and 65 skills; a count of the disk that day gave 7 plugins and 34 skills. In all, 264 figure claims could not be traced to the source, and no draft marker showed anywhere on the site. The release stopped there.
It was settled by revising the source text, so that every figure on the site has to trace to it. The count moved again: on 19 October 2026 it stood at 8 toolkits and 25 skills. Every page of this version reads that figure from one file.
Checks on rendered pixels
The full set of release checks found seven blocking defects. Among them were hero text that fell below contrast on phones while an animated scan line passed behind it, touch targets up to 18 pixels short of 44, and footer links that took keyboard focus behind a fixed panel.
All seven were already in the earliest build the repository holds, from 23 August 2026; whether they were there on 2 August cannot be shown. The 2 August contrast run measured one frame per element, so it could not see a moving line.
A later check of the design system found what the release checks had not measured at all: a back link whose hover and focus colour fell to 1.49:1, a focus ring at 1.64:1, and a caret that blinked without end, with no way to pause it. Contrast had been measured at rest only.
What was fixed
A blind reviewer, an AI session that sees only the files and the criteria, then failed the source text. Claims about a knowledge-layer design that I had withdrawn on 28 July 2026 were still in it, on the built site and on the live one. A second blind review narrowly failed it again: six of the nine points were fixed, three only partly, and the new material added blocking items. Where it stood on 29 September 2026:
- The source text was revised, so that every figure on the site traces to it.
- The review findings were fixed, and the fixes checked by the team's own editor, not by a third blind review.
- The fixes for the seven blocking defects were built, but not yet checked again by the QA lead.
- The finished release pack is to get its own blind review before anything is published.
On 29 September 2026 nothing had been deployed, and the live site was still version 1. Version 4 was built and never deployed. On 17 October 2026 I began version 5, which rebuilds the site in my own brand.
The limit
The subject and the auditor are the same person, so the discipline on display is self-administered. The checkable records, the decision files, the logs and the site itself, matter more than this account of them.
