I have been thinking a lot about this so-called vibe coding. When I first heard it was when we were managing the Google Gemini Discord server. They had an event that demonstrated how to use it. I thought it was neat but I also felt like it was for “real” devs, not for tech adjacent weirdos like myself.
I was super wrong.
But first let’s talk about what a silly name Vibe Coding is. Because it isn’t really a vibe. When I am working on a project it is much less a vibe and more like reading a choose your own adventure story or maybe it is like playing a role playing game to create something. In my head I have gone with Choose Your Own Adventure Coding.
It always starts about the same. You have an idea, usually a dumb one in my case, and you go to claude. You say “I want to make this really dumb idea.” For this example we will us the remake of dylanreed.com, my link page.
I had just finished(ish) the redesign of my blog and had a lot of assets burning a hole in my pocket. I had the old dylanreed.com that looked like every other link page in the world. Picture, name, mini bio, list of links. Super standard stuff. So I told claude:
Here is what I want to do i want to take inspiration from Github/theme-pixel-art to design this page. Do you have som recommendations?
And boy oh boy, did it have some recommendations.
Alright Rodney, I've dug through your pixel-art theme. It's a vibe. Here's what I see and some recommendations:
What theme-pixel-art Has
| Element | Description |
|----------------------|---------------------------------------------------------|
| Tileset borders | Grass/fantasy tiles framing content |
| Animated sprites | Category-based characters (clown, wizard, knight, etc.) |
| Medieval typography | MedievalSharp + Uncial Antiqua fonts |
| Day/night toggle | Full theme swap with localStorage |
| Custom cursors | Pixel art pointer + hand |
| Adventure game links | Sierra-style hover glows |
| Scrollbar styling | Wooden medieval look |
| Note scrolls | Parchment-style microblog posts |
Recommendations for dylanreed.com
Since dylanreed.com is a link-in-bio page (not a full blog), I see a few paths:
Option 1: Full Pixel Art Makeover
Ditch Lynx, adapt the pixel-art theme for a bio page:
- Animated avatar sprite (clown? wizard?)
- Grass tile border around the card
- Medieval fonts for your name
- Day/night toggle
- Link buttons styled like adventure game actions
Option 2: Hybrid Approach
Keep Lynx's clean structure, steal the best bits:
- Pixel art background tile
- Custom cursors
- MedievalSharp font for titles
- Glow effects on links
- Maybe a small animated sprite near your avatar
Option 3: Just the Vibes
Minimal changes - color palette, typography, subtle pixel texture
---
My recommendation: Option 1 or 2 - this is
YOUR personal site, it should feel like the pixel-art blog.
Your bio mentions "puppet wrangler, animation anarchist"
so a playful pixel art aesthetic fits perfectly.
Which direction calls to you?
Then it started brainstorming. Ignoring all of the research it was doing here is what it was saying in between looking at stuff:
Let me gather a bit more context on the assets we have to work with:
And then my favorite bit:
Oh we've got ASSETS. The cabin theme has:
- Cat sprites with 8-direction run/idle animations
- Falling sprites spritesheet for background chaos
- Cozy cursors (hand + pointer)
- Cabin backgrounds (day/night)
Once I had gone through its six questions it was ready to give me THE PLAN: also it calls me Rodney… don’t ask.
Alright Rodney, here's the full picture:
| Aspect | Decision |
|-----------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Layout | Full-screen floating islands, avatar centered, links scattered organically |
| Platforms | 7 pixel-art ground tiles, each with its own patrolling cat |
| Cats | Walk back and forth, randomized speeds, idle at edges |
| Falling sprites | Start moderate, escalate every 30 sec, uncapped chaos |
| Day/Night | Auto-detect from visitor's local time |
| Avatar | Keep real Gravatar, floating in pixel chaos |
| Mobile | Vertical stack, cats stay, chaos reduced/capped |
| Cursors | Cabin theme cozy cursors |
| Tech | Hugo, vanilla JS, canvas for sprites, no frameworks |
Then I unleashed the hounds of hell or code. This is my favorite part of this process. You just let it run and do something else, like start another project. And it works through things, asks you questions if it needs to, gets permission to do stuff and then it is done.
Or so it thinks. This is when the “human” part comes in. It shows me the local version and it is good but it can be better. And since I didn’t just spend the last six hours on stack exchange trying to figure out how to word a question so I get the results I want, I am ready to play.
Initially it just had one cat, now it has more. The buttons were always in the same place… not any more. And the buttons were all the same color, now they change style based on which cat gets placed on them which is also decided randomly.
If you want to try it out, get claude code and give it a try. Once you get it set up, open your terminal and type in ‘claude’ and tell it your hearts desire.