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Personal Website Starter Kit

Shreyas Prakash headshot

Shreyas Prakash

I recently open-sourced my astro-blog-ghost GitHub repository - a modern blog template built with AstroJS and Ghost CMS integration. This project serves as an excellent starting point for developers looking to create a portfolio website with:

  • 📦 Zero-client JavaScript by default (with opt-in hydration)
  • 🚀 Built-in Ghost CMS integration for content management
  • 🌓 Dark/light mode toggle with system preference detection
  • 📱 Mobile-optimized responsive layouts
  • 🎨 CSS custom properties for easy theming
  • 🔍 SEO optimization with automatic sitemap generation
  • 📄 MDX support for interactive components in posts

To create your own portfolio:

  1. Clone the repository: git clone https://github.com/shreyas-makes/astro-blog-ghost
  2. Install dependencies: npm install
  3. Connect to Ghost CMS via .env file
  4. Customize the src/config.ts with your personal details
  5. Modify components in src/components/ to match your style

Key customization points:

  • Update color schemes in src/styles/global.css
  • Add portfolio sections in src/pages/
  • Create custom page layouts in src/layouts/
  • Implement your preferred analytics in src/components/scripts/

The template supports: ✅ Blog posts with code syntax highlighting ✅ Project showcases with responsive images ✅ About page with Markdown/MDX content ✅ RSS feed generation ✅ Open Graph protocol implementation

Deploy to any static host (Vercel, Netlify, GitHub Pages) with built-in CI/CD pipelines.

[Read this essay]([[How I blog blog with Obsidian, Cloudflare, AstroJS, Github]]) to know more about how I use Obsidian for publishing my blog posts on AstroJS.

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2026

  1. How I started building softwares with AI agents being non technical

2025

  1. Legible and illegible tasks in organisations
  2. L2 Fat marker sketches
  3. Writing as moats for humans
  4. Beauty of second degree probes
  5. Read raw transcripts
  6. Boundary objects as the new prototypes
  7. One way door decisions
  8. Finished softwares should exist
  9. Essay Quality Ranker
  10. Export LLM conversations as snippets
  11. Flipping questions on its head
  12. Vibe writing maxims
  13. How I blog with Obsidian, Cloudflare, AstroJS, Github
  14. How I build greenfield apps with AI-assisted coding
  15. We have been scammed by the Gaussian distribution club
  16. Classify incentive problems into stag hunts, and prisoners dilemmas
  17. I was wrong about optimal stopping
  18. Thinking like a ship
  19. Hyperpersonalised N=1 learning
  20. New mediums for humans to complement superintelligence
  21. Maxims for AI assisted coding
  22. Personal Website Starter Kit
  23. Virtual bookshelves
  24. It's computational everything
  25. Public gardens, secret routes
  26. Git way of learning to code
  27. Kaomoji generator
  28. Style Transfer in AI writing
  29. Copy, Paste and Cite
  30. Understanding codebases without using code
  31. Vibe coding with Cursor
  32. Virtuoso Guide for Personal Memory Systems
  33. Writing in Future Past
  34. Publish Originally, Syndicate Elsewhere
  35. Poetic License of Design
  36. Idea in the shower, testing before breakfast
  37. Technology and regulation have a dance of ice and fire
  38. How I ship "stuff"
  39. Weekly TODO List on CLI
  40. Writing is thinking
  41. Song of Shapes, Words and Paths
  42. How do we absorb ideas better?

2024

  1. Read writers who operate
  2. Brew your ideas lazily
  3. Vibes
  4. Trees, Branches, Twigs and Leaves — Mental Models for Writing
  5. Compound Interest of Private Notes
  6. Conceptual Compression for LLMs
  7. Meta-analysis for contradictory research findings
  8. Beauty of Zettels
  9. Proof of work
  10. Gauging previous work of new joinees to the team
  11. Task management for product managers
  12. Stitching React and Rails together
  13. Exploring "smart connections" for note taking
  14. Deploying Home Cooked Apps with Rails
  15. Self Marketing
  16. Repetitive Copyprompting
  17. Questions to ask every decade
  18. Balancing work, time and focus
  19. Hyperlinks are like cashew nuts
  20. Brand treatments, Design Systems, Vibes
  21. How to spot human writing on the internet?
  22. Can a thought be an algorithm?
  23. Opportunity Harvesting
  24. How does AI affect UI?
  25. Everything is a prioritisation problem
  26. Now
  27. How I do product roasts
  28. The Modern Startup Stack
  29. In-person vision transmission
  30. How might we help children invent for social good?
  31. The meeting before the meeting
  32. Design that's so bad it's actually good
  33. Breaking the fourth wall of an interview
  34. Obsessing over personal websites
  35. Convert v0.dev React to Rails ViewComponents
  36. English is the hot new programming language
  37. Better way to think about conflicts
  38. The role of taste in building products
  39. World's most ancient public health problem
  40. Dear enterprises, we're tired of your subscriptions
  41. Products need not be user centered
  42. Pluginisation of Modern Software
  43. Let's make every work 'strategic'
  44. Making Nielsen's heuristics more digestible
  45. Startups are a fertile ground for risk taking
  46. Insights are not just a salad of facts
  47. Minimum Lovable Product

2023

  1. Methods are lifejackets not straight jackets
  2. How to arrive at on-brand colours?
  3. Minto principle for writing memos
  4. Importance of Why
  5. Quality Ideas Trump Execution
  6. How to hire a personal doctor
  7. Why I prefer indie softwares
  8. Use code only if no code fails
  9. Personal Observation Techniques
  10. Design is a confusing word
  11. A Primer to Service Design Blueprints
  12. Rapid Journey Prototyping
  13. Directory Structure Visualizer
  14. AI git commits
  15. Do's and Don'ts of User Research
  16. Design Manifesto
  17. Complex project management for product

2022

  1. How might we enable patients and caregivers to overcome preventable health conditions?
  2. Pedagogy of the Uncharted — What for, and Where to?

2020

  1. Future of Ageing with Mehdi Yacoubi
  2. Future of Equity with Ludovick Peters
  3. Future of Tacit knowledge with Celeste Volpi
  4. Future of Mental Health with Kavya Rao
  5. Future of Rural Innovation with Thabiso Blak Mashaba
  6. Future of unschooling with Che Vanni
  7. Future of work with Laetitia Vitaud
  8. How might we prevent acquired infections in hospitals?

2019

  1. The soul searching years
  2. Design education amidst social tribulations
  3. How might we assist deafblind runners to navigate?