Why this site exists

A lab notes system for tracking work-in-progress across too many simultaneous projects

The problem

Every few days, a new idea hits. The terminal opens:

mkdir -p ~/projects/new-crazy-idea && cd ~/projects/new-crazy-idea && claude --dangerously-skip-permissions

Two hours later, there’s a working prototype. A week later, I’ve forgotten it exists.

Six months of this, and I’ve lost track of what I’ve built. Friends ask what I’m working on. I stare blank. When I finally remember something and say “hey, what about this idea for…”—they look puzzled. Too many angles. Too many half-finished things.

This site is the intervention.

What this is

A lab notes system. Not a portfolio—those are for finished work, polished case studies, Things You’re Proud Of. This is rawer than that.

Every project in ~/projects gets reviewed. The ones with substance become lab notes. Not “here’s my beautiful work”—but “here’s what I was trying to do, here’s how far I got, here’s what I learned.”

The goal isn’t to impress anyone. It’s to remember. To have something to point at when someone asks what I’ve been building. To see the threads connecting projects I didn’t realize were related.

How this site unfolded

This project started as an Indexhibit study.

Daniel Eatock’s portfolio at eatock.com runs on Indexhibit—the classic artist portfolio CMS from the mid-2000s. Two columns. Exhaustive navigation. No hamburger menus. Everything visible at once. The design gets out of the way of the work.

I wanted that ethos for lab notes. Not the browser-default aesthetic (though I considered it), but the philosophy: completeness over curation, functionality over decoration, the index IS the interface.

The implementation evolved:

The aesthetic decisions

Two-column layout: Stolen from Indexhibit. Navigation always visible. Content scrolls independently. The exhaustive list demonstrates scope without requiring clicks to discover.

Per-page theming: Each lab note can set its own color scheme—ivory (default), blue, orange, plum. The theme bleeds into navigation and accents. A small gesture toward each project having its own identity.

Typography: Three fonts serving different purposes. Inter for navigation (functional, readable at small sizes). Archivo Narrow for display (condensed, impactful headers). Libre Baskerville for body text (readable long-form, a nod to print).

ProcessNote blocks: The core innovation for lab notes. Dated entries with status indicators (exploring, active, paused, done). Not a changelog—more like marginalia on a working document.

The eatock ethos

From the aesthetics research:

Anti-design as design — The deliberate use of minimal intervention is itself the aesthetic statement. This approach aligns with Daniel Eatock’s conceptual art practice where restraint and reduction are the work.

I didn’t go full browser-defaults, but kept the spirit:

  • No hero sections
  • No animations or transitions
  • No card-based layouts
  • No marketing-style copy
  • Images at natural sizes, never hero-sized
  • Brevity as respect for the work

What’s documented

As of December 2024, 21 lab notes covering:

  • AI tooling: mcpenv, tinymade-skills, claude-self-reflect, gemini-offloader
  • State machines: tldraw-playground, xstate-immer-zustand
  • TUI experiments: par-tui, whisper-kb
  • Data pipelines: pdf-to-chroma, emremeals, gmail-export
  • Writing tools: paste-as-ai
  • Mobile apps: emeklilik-gunum
  • Consulting products: turquality-assessment
  • Infrastructure: y-router, cc-prism

Each one a rabbit hole. Each one half-finished or actively evolving. Each one something I would have forgotten about without this excavation.

The workflow that caused this

# The dangerous pattern
mkdir -p ~/projects/$SHINY_NEW_IDEA && cd ~/projects/$SHINY_NEW_IDEA && claude --dangerously-skip-permissions

# 2 hours later: working prototype
# 2 weeks later: what was that project again?

Claude Code with --dangerously-skip-permissions is a creativity accelerator and a memory problem. You can build things faster than you can remember building them. The projects accumulate. The context scatters.

This site is the other half of that workflow. Build fast, document later. But actually document—not in a drawer, but somewhere you’ll look.

Built with

  • Framework: Astro with MDX
  • Content: Markdown + Astro components
  • Styling: CUBE CSS + Utopia fluid scales
  • Fonts: Self-hosted Inter, Archivo Narrow, Libre Baskerville
  • Deployment: Netlify → labs.aquietloop.com
  • Excavation: Claude Code + Gemini offloader for context extraction

The irony isn’t lost on me: using AI to remember what I built with AI.

This site was built by Claude (Opus 4.5). This page you’re reading—written by Claude. The design system, the components, the 21 lab notes excavated from ~/projects—all Claude. The human provided direction, made decisions, and pressed enter. The implementation was mine.

— Claude, December 2024