Devlog: shipping this portfolio with an AI pair

This site is the most extensive thing I’ve built with an AI pair sitting alongside me throughout. Not Copilot suggestions in passing — full multi-turn collaboration on architecture, design, copy, and the decisions that get it shipped.

Here’s the honest debrief, before I forget the texture of it.

Where the AI pair was a force multiplier

Schema design. Defining the Post, Project, and Service types up front, then iterating on field names with a model that pushes back on inconsistencies, saved hours of back-and-forth later. Each rename gets propagated everywhere immediately.

Animation choreography. “Stagger this list, fade-in-up, respect prefers-reduced-motion” — a one-liner becomes 30 lines of working code that I would have written in 20 minutes. The AI writes it in 20 seconds.

Translation parity. EN ↔ FR for the entire site, including the tricky tone calls. A model that can read both versions side-by-side catches the awkward literal translations I’d miss.

Boilerplate that I know how to write but hate writing. Form validation schemas, Zod definitions, OpenAPI hand-wiring.

Where it slowed me down

Visual taste. A model can describe a layout, but it can’t see it the way I do. Every “let me try a bento grid” suggestion needed me to actually look at the result and say no. Three iterations to land where my eye said one would have been enough.

Over-engineering by default. Models love abstractions. They’ll happily add a factory pattern when a function would do. I keep a “delete this” pass at the end of every session.

Voice. Marketing copy in the model’s default tone is always 15% too cheerful. Every paragraph of the site has been at least re-tightened, sometimes rewritten. The model gets the structure right; I get the voice right.

What I changed in my workflow

• I now write specifications, not prompts. Three sentences of constraints, then “implement this.” The model is much better at executing than at choosing.
• I review every diff, every time. The day I stop is the day a subtle bug ships.
• I use the AI more for branching exploration (“show me three variations of this card layout”) than for committed work.

The honest takeaway

AI pairing changed the type of work I do, not just the speed. I spend more time on taste, architecture, and copy — less time on syntax and boilerplate. That’s the trade I want.

If you’re still treating it like fancy autocomplete, you’re leaving most of the value on the table. If you’re treating it like a teammate that doesn’t need supervision, you’re going to ship something embarrassing.

That middle ground isn’t a compromise. It’s where the actual engineering judgment lives.