Start Here: Building the Tool While Using It

By John Hardy
January 9, 2026 | Series: genesis

This project exists to test a new model of software development and content production in public. The repository is both the lab and the record, and the system I am building will publish the discoveries that come out of its own construction. If you want the map of how the system thinks, treat this series as a lab notebook with working notes and decisions in view. I want readers to see the system forming alongside the result.

The first content is the documentation process itself, so I write while I build and treat the conversation and decisions as raw material with constraints and contradictions kept visible. The Q/A process I am working out here is the real work, and it becomes the content. Each entry shows a decision while it is still forming, before it hardens into tooling.

Over time, this back-and-forth will harden into scripts as the workflow stabilises and the content aligns with the system it describes. The point of doing it in the open is that the system proves itself by publishing its own formation. The diary becomes the tool because each change leaves a record I can test and reuse.

I minimise imports and treat third-party tools as a last resort. When a problem fits in a small script, I write it and keep it in the repo so the implementation stays visible. When the problem is larger than that, I import a library and document the specific gap it fills.

On the publishing side, I am aiming for the most boring convention that still works: a home page index with the newest post at the top. Each post also gets a dedicated article page with a stable permalink. That is the shape of the site I want to live inside. It lets me read the archive as a plain list without extra machinery. It also keeps the build simple enough to inspect.

To follow the build as it forms, read the genesis series in order, starting here. After this post, read Blog Philosophy. Next, read A Blog That Is Also the Build System and continue forward through the series.