My last blog post was in 2012. Thirteen years of digital silence—not because I had nothing to say, but because the friction of maintaining a blog had simply worn me down. The endless cycle of researching frameworks, debugging deployment issues, and wrestling with themes had turned what should be creative expression into a technical chore.
Fast forward to 2025, and I decided it was time for a revival. But this time, I had a secret weapon: an AI agent as my development partner.
The Old Way vs. The New Way
In 2012, reviving a blog would have meant:
- Spending hours researching static site generators
- Reading multiple “Best Blogging Frameworks of 2012” articles
- Trial-and-error with different themes
- Debugging cryptic deployment errors at 2 AM
- Eventually settling for “good enough” after days of work
In 2025, it looked more like this conversation:
Me: “I already have a blog, but the last entry was in 2012. I want to revive that blog.”
AI Agent: “Starting a blog revival project sounds exciting! Before I dive deep into researching the best approach for your specific needs, I’d like to clarify a few things…”
What followed wasn’t a barrage of overwhelming options, but a thoughtful conversation about my actual needs: fast loading times, code syntax highlighting, simple markdown workflow, and deployment to Cloudflare Pages.
The Art of Technical Conversation
The most striking difference was how the AI agent approached the problem. Instead of presenting me with a comprehensive report (which, admittedly, it initially tried to do), we had an actual conversation:
Me: “When I said I want to load the page fast, I was not saying base all recommendation purely on performance… I should have told you that I prefer simplicity over performance.”
AI Agent: “You’re absolutely right… Let me step back and focus on what really matters for your use case: simplicity over pure performance.”
This iterative dialogue felt more like pair programming with a knowledgeable colleague than consulting a search engine. The agent adjusted its recommendations based on my feedback, caught my preferences even when I hadn’t articulated them clearly, and most importantly, kept the conversation focused on my actual goals rather than theoretical best practices.
Hugo: The Surprisingly Simple Choice
We settled on Hugo—not because it had the most GitHub stars or the flashiest features, but because it hit the sweet spot of simplicity and performance for my use case. The installation process was refreshingly straightforward:
brew install hugo
hugo new site my-blog
cd my-blog
No complex dependency management, no version conflicts, no mysterious build failures. Just a single binary that works.
Within minutes, I had a working blog with the Ananke theme:
hugo new posts/my-first-post.md
hugo server -D
And suddenly, there it was: a clean, fast-loading blog running on localhost:1313. The syntax highlighting worked perfectly, the navigation was intuitive, and the markdown workflow felt effortless.
The Deployment That Just Worked
Perhaps the most satisfying moment was the deployment to Cloudflare Pages. In the old days, this would have involved:
- Reading deployment documentation
- Configuring build scripts
- Debugging environment variables
- Probably breaking something twice
In 2025, with an AI agent guiding the process:
git add .
git commit -m "Initial Hugo blog setup"
git push origin main
Then simply connecting the GitHub repository to Cloudflare Pages, letting it auto-detect Hugo, and watching the deployment succeed on the first try. No configuration required, no build scripts to debug, no late-night troubleshooting sessions.
The Collaboration Dynamic
What made this experience fundamentally different wasn’t just the AI’s technical knowledge—it was the collaborative approach. When I expressed uncertainty about theme choices, the agent didn’t overwhelm me with options but suggested starting simple:
AI Agent: “Here’s what I’m thinking: why don’t we start with Ananke just to get you up and running quickly? You can literally have a working blog in 10 minutes. Then once you’re comfortable with the Hugo workflow, we can always switch to PaperMod or any other theme later.”
This “start simple, iterate later” philosophy kept momentum high and decision fatigue low. Instead of getting paralyzed by the perfect choice, we made a good choice and moved forward.
The Moment of Recognition
When the blog finally went live at mayanks.pages.dev, I had a moment of recognition about how much the development landscape had changed. Not just the tools—though Hugo’s speed and Cloudflare’s deployment pipeline are genuinely impressive—but the entire approach to learning and building.
Me: “It feels great to have the blog running so fast. Earlier I would need to do the research myself, read couple of howto blogs, select the template and debug issues as they are coming. But now with you as my agent, I don’t have to any such thing.”
The AI agent had effectively compressed what used to be days of research and trial-and-error into an hour of focused conversation and implementation.
Implications for Creative Work
This experience has me thinking about the broader implications for creative and technical work. The friction that kept me away from blogging for thirteen years—the overhead of maintaining technical infrastructure—has largely evaporated. The tools have become invisible, letting the focus return to where it belongs: the writing.
But perhaps more importantly, having an AI agent as a development partner changes the nature of learning itself. Instead of front-loading all the research before starting (and often getting overwhelmed), you can learn iteratively, making decisions in context with immediate feedback.
The New Creative Workflow
My blog is now live, the deployment pipeline is set up, and adding new content is as simple as:
- Create a new markdown file in Cursor
- Write thoughts, add code examples
- Commit and push
- Watch it appear live within minutes
This is the workflow I dreamed of in 2012 but couldn’t quite achieve with the tools and knowledge available then. The promise of static site generators has finally been fully realized—not just in performance, but in developer experience.
Looking Forward
As I write this post (which will itself be a test of the new workflow), I’m struck by how the AI agent didn’t just help me solve a technical problem—it helped me rediscover the joy of building things on the web. The conversation-driven approach, the iterative problem-solving, the focus on simplicity over perfection.
Thirteen years later, I’m blogging again. But more than that, I’m excited to be blogging again. And sometimes, that excitement is the most important technical specification of all.
This post was written in Cursor, committed to GitHub, and automatically deployed to Cloudflare Pages. The entire process, from conception to publication, took about 30 minutes—most of which was spent writing, not debugging.