Redo my personal website

Prompt: Build a minimalist, content-first personal website inspired by some of my favorite web sites, borrowing their clarity of organization, restrained navigation, sophisticated typography, and generous whitespace while developing a distinct voice and identity. The site should feel calm, literate, and durable, prioritizing long-form reading over branding or visual noise, with a simple top navigation structure such as About and Blog, a clean homepage anchored by a strong central image and understated social links, and a typographic system that emphasizes readability, hierarchy, and timeless design across desktop and mobile.

It started with a simple prompt:

• I want to redo my website. I want a clean, elegant, simple site.
• I want an About page.
• I want a blog feed.
• I want a Projects page where I can post updates on the things I am building.
• I want RSS feeds, including separate feeds for each project.

That was the entire specification.

What is different now is not the request. It is the tooling.

With AI agents that can see and modify source code directly, a non-coder can now build and maintain a real website on open infrastructure. Not a closed builder. Not a constrained template. A portable, extensible site.

I chose Codex because I was already deeply using ChatGPT and had not yet explored Claude Code. When OpenAI released the newest version of the Codex app, it aligned perfectly with my workflow. It allowed direct code visibility, rapid iteration, and safe experimentation in context. For me, it was the right tool at the right moment.

The stack underneath is straightforward:

• Cloudflare Pages for hosting, free for simple sites.

• Cloudflare Domains for registration, roughly eight to ten dollars per year.

• A static site architecture that produces clean RSS feeds.

• Project-specific feeds layered on top.

This infrastructure has existed for years. What did not exist was a way for most people to use it.

The breakthrough is not cheap hosting. It is AI agents that can read, write, and refactor code on your behalf.

Anything you see online, any interaction, feature, or layout, you can now describe to an AI agent and ask for a prototype. You can preview it. Adjust it. Refine it. Then publish it on your own domain.

That collapses the gap between imagination and execution.

Many of us have mourned the loss of the open web. Closed platforms centralized power. Custom software required specialists. Publishing required permission.

If technical expertise is no longer the gatekeeper, we may have another opportunity for a more open web. When anyone can describe what they want, respond to a preview, and iterate with a digital collaborator, experimentation becomes normal again.

Most people still pay around $200 per year for a closed website builder. That made sense when alternatives required technical skill. It makes less sense when open infrastructure is accessible and AI can operate it alongside you.

Owning your domain and hosting your own content is more important than ever. Platforms change. Policies shift. Algorithms reshape visibility. Publishing on your own site keeps the canonical version under your control.

Today I pay eight dollars per year for robertstephens.com. Hosting is free. If I ever need to move, the site is portable and AI can guide the transition.

As AI agents develop memory, they retain preferences, structure, and workflow patterns. That accumulated context becomes durable capital. Models themselves are becoming interchangeable. Your domain and your accumulated work matter more.

As the founder of OpenClaw said, how can you know what you want to build until you have built it?

Artists, writers, and creative people who do not know how to code can now build software. We may see new kinds of tools emerge simply because the barrier to entry has collapsed.

This site now includes:

• A blog.

• RSS feeds.

• Project-specific feeds.

• A growing projects archive.

• A living project page at /machineyearning/.

I plan to document experiments, use cases, and lessons learned. Not just for myself, but for nonprofits I serve and side projects I am building.