today I rebuilt my blog

Published Apr 7, 2026

Today was a full reset and cleanup day for my site.

I used AI as a pair engineer for the whole process.

I started by asking AI to inspect my git branches and separate active history from obsolete history. Then we merged old branch history safely, without overwriting the current gh-pages content.

After that, AI helped migrate older posts from legacy branches into the current Jekyll blog, clean broken legacy navigation bits, and convert imported HTML posts into cleaner Markdown.

I also used AI to troubleshoot local runtime issues and set up a newer Ruby environment so Jekyll could render properly on my machine. That made it possible to preview and iterate on the real gh-pages source locally, instead of guessing.

Then AI helped me redesign the homepage and overall style to get closer to the editorial look I wanted:

simpler navigation
stronger typography
cleaner post stream
less visual noise

I iterated quickly by giving AI direct feedback like “closer,” then applying another pass.

Finally, I updated site identity details:

blog title to Jake Shi
homepage intro copy
contact email link to jakexshi@gmail.com

Big takeaway from today: AI works best when I drive intent and taste, and let it handle the repetitive heavy lifting.