How this gets made.

The site

Typefaces

Spectral for diary and reflection prose. Bebas Neue for blogpost mastheads. League Gothic for newsletter colophons. Cormorant Garamond for reflections. Caveat for fiveminute pieces. JetBrains Mono for notes. Azeret Mono for techfeed dispatches. Each content type is set in its own family because each one wants its own voice.

Stack

Astro 5 (static), React 19 islands where they earn it, TailwindCSS for utilities, MDX for the long pieces. Hosted on Vercel as a microfrontend behind casey.berlin. Source on GitHub.

Reading model

No homepage. No index. The site is a sequence of single pieces. You arrived here by typing the URL or following a link from one writing, and that is the only way in.

The working method

AI is part of how I write now. I will not pretend otherwise, and I will not perform that the work is more or less mine than it is. The disclosure line at the foot of each piece names what kind of help was used and who from. The verbs aren't decorative.

The loop, in plain language: I draft, or I ask for a draft. We pass the piece back and forth. I cut what doesn't sound like me. I keep what does. I publish when the piece would embarrass me to leave unfinished in a drawer. The model isn't a co-author in the legal sense; it's a collaborator the way a sharp editor is — present, named, and credited.

Diaries are written by hand. The exoskeleton stays at the door.

Credit conventions

The disclosure verb tells you what kind of work was shared:

Drafted with

The model produced the first draft from a prompt; I revised, cut, and rewrote until it sounded like me.

Co-written with

Back-and-forth across the whole piece. Neither of us wrote any single paragraph alone; the structure is mine.

Thinking with

I drafted; the model challenged, suggested, and asked questions. Words on the page are mostly mine.

Edited with

I wrote the draft; the model edited for clarity, rhythm, and unkind passive voice.

Researched with

The model gathered, summarised, or fact-checked source material. Synthesis and argument are mine.

Dispatched with

Used on techfeed entries: the model helped extract and rephrase from a source I selected.

Produced with

Used on newsletter issues: the model helped sequence, edit, and tighten an issue I planned.

Acknowledgements

Friends who push back when an essay is half-baked. Readers who write me to disagree. The open-source typefaces and software that made this site possible at zero margin. The dog, who insists I stop typing and walk.