The origin
I first tried creating this site back in 2021, and then again in 2024. However, I never got it to a state where I could think to myself “I have finished building it” until recently.
I was trying out Google’s Antigravity CLI in my free time. For both experimentation and entertainment purposes, I wanted to find something completely different than the things I have been doing in the past year or two. Finishing this site came to mind, so I gave it a try.
The site generator
I didn’t want something that is more complex than a static site hosted using GitHub Pages, so I needed a static site generator. I chose Hugo because it seemed to have a simple and nice-to-use CLI, was fast (written in Go), and would allow for relatively low maintenance.
Styling tool
Although I wanted low maintenance, I didn’t want a pre-built Hugo theme. I wanted to do the styling myself and have full control of the process. A pre-built Hugo theme may lock me into a set of features that may not completely match my needs, and an aesthetic that is not really my style.
I also wanted to learn CSS and SCSS a bit, so SCSS was the choice. This I think turned out fine, as Antigravity CLI can handle SCSS quite well from what I have seen.
Stylistic choices
Stylistic theme
I aimed for a minimalist and clean aesthetic with my own personal touch. The content should be the primary focus.
The domain of the site is nathannguyen.dev, which reflects what I want this site to be: a site where I mostly write about programming and software development. I want the overall aesthetic to match that a bit.
I consider myself a heavy terminal user. I want the site to have elements of the terminal environment to it. Therefore, I designed the navbar the way that it is, with some cool special effects.
The rest of the site is quite normal. It’s just a very simple blog-style site. I made sure the written content remained the focus, so adding anything unnecessary would just distract from the actual content.
Color schemes with Light/Dark modes
I think in 2026, having a Light/Dark mode toggle is a must.
To simplify the theming, I use the popular Catppuccin color theme, with the Macchiato variant for Dark mode, and the Latte variant for Light mode. I am no color theory expert, so using Catppuccin really simplified the coloring of the site and gave it a bit of a “terminal” feel to it, exactly what I was looking for.
Typography
The site lets you choose between using Sans Serif and Serif fonts. I think this is a pretty cool feature.
- Sans Serif fonts: Inter and JetBrains Mono
- Serif fonts: Fira Code and Merryweather
Some thoughts
Overall, I’m quite happy with how the site turned out, even though the process wasn’t always smooth sailing. Antigravity introduced a few subtle SCSS bugs along the way. These bugs most frequently happened when the agent got “tunnel vision,” focusing on implementing a single feature without considering the rest of the SCSS styling. While it was always able to recover and fix things in the end, it did require a fair amount of back-and-forth to resolve the issues. Nevertheless, having the agent assist was a massive time-saver compared to styling everything entirely from scratch.
It has been a really fun experiment. As someone who isn’t a designer, I’m genuinely pleased with the final look and feel of the site. This site is probably simple enough for this approach to be justified. Would I trust both the agent and my own skill to steer it if I am creating the front-end of a more complex website? Probably not just yet. We will wait and see.