CuriousCoach.tools

This is the site you’re looking at right now - a portfolio and blog built to showcase tools and document the journey of building them.

The Approach

Rather than reaching for a CMS or a complex content management setup, I wanted something minimal that I could understand completely and modify easily.

The core idea: a single apps.ts file acts as the source of truth for all project cards. Each app has structured metadata - name, summary, description, status, type, links - and the UI renders from that data. No database, no admin panel, just a TypeScript file.

How It Works

Card-Based Content

Apps are defined as structured data:

{
    slug: "my-app",
    name: "My App",
    summary: "One-liner for cards",
    description: ["Paragraph one", "Paragraph two"],
    status: "tool",      // maturity: tool or lab
    type: "utility",     // purpose: coaching-tool or utility
    visible: true
}

This drives the card components on the Tools and Labs pages. Change the data, the UI updates.

Two-Dimensional Categorisation

Apps have two orthogonal dimensions:

• Status (maturity): tool for production-ready, lab for experimental
• Type (purpose): coaching-tool for AI-powered thinking aids, utility for workflow tools

This lets me separate the playful experiments from the practical helpers, while also distinguishing finished work from work-in-progress.

Markdown for Detail

Each app gets a markdown file in content/apps/ for longer-form content. The card gets you interested; the markdown page tells the full story.

Tech Stack

• Astro - Static site generator with great developer experience
• TypeScript - Type safety for the app metadata
• Markdown - Blog posts and detailed app pages
• Vercel - Deployment on push to main

Why Build It?

I wanted a place to share what I’m building that wasn’t LinkedIn posts or scattered GitHub repos. Somewhere I could show the tools themselves, but also write about the decisions, dead ends, and lessons learned along the way.

The blog isn’t separate from the portfolio - it’s part of the same story. Building in public means showing the process, not just the polished result.

Design Philosophy

Minimal by default: No features until they’re needed. No CMS until a JSON file isn’t enough. No complex build pipelines until the simple ones break.

Data-driven UI: The apps.ts pattern means adding a new project is editing a file, not clicking through an admin interface.

Write to understand: The blog exists because writing about building helps me understand what I’m actually doing - and sometimes helps others too.

Built with Astro. Deployed on Vercel. Content managed via text files and git.