Stop renting your website

"Good design is as little design as possible." — Dieter Rams

This week the study blog moved out of its rented $90 theme and into a hand-built one — four days, no code written by hand. This issue distills the parts that transfer to any project where you tell an AI what to build.

Write the rules before the prompts

One design file — colors, fonts, what gets a gradient and what never does — turns "make it look nice" from a coin flip into a spec. Hand the AI the whole file up front: every rule you hold back comes home later as ten tiny "a bit more pink, please" prompts. An afternoon of written rules pays for itself the same day, and every future asset (site, templates, thumbnails) pulls from the same source.

The before picture you can't take later

Mid-rebuild, the old design stops existing — and with it every chance of a before/after shot. The five-minute audit that beats it: screenshot every page of the thing you're about to replace, and write down what bothers you, what stays, where you want to end up. It documents the win and sharpens the brief you hand the AI. Do it before you touch anything; later doesn't exist.

Prompt to steal: make the AI grade its own build

Before trusting any AI-built result, make it audit its own work — the closest a non-coder gets to a code review:

✦ Prompt Claude · Code Copy

This is the current state of {the project}. Grade it honestly: what did you build, what did you skip, what would you do better? The end result has to be {a good website — SEO, performance, accessibility} included. List the top issues, then fix them one by one.

It works because it splits "what exists" from "what's missing" — the model stops defending its output and starts reviewing it.

Fun project idea: ship a dummy, keep the brand

When a project leaves the house — a template, a demo repo, a sample dashboard — build it in your full design language and swap only the thing that makes it you: the colors. Typography, layout and motion are handwriting; the color combo is identity. Wire the theme to three color variables, give every outgoing project its own three, and sign it with a one-line byline. The work travels, the brand stays home.

Current project: a home that's actually mine

• The study blog now runs on its own hand-built Ghost theme — live, validated, zero errors from Ghost's checker.
• The full build story — brand book first, the honest bill, and the before picture that doesn't exist — is on the blog: Building a Custom Ghost Theme With AI.
• Next: restyling 18 older posts, one by one.

Done is better than perfect. ✦

If this issue saves you one "a bit more pink" prompt, it did its job. See you next Sunday.