arnav.tech

arnav.tech is a deliberately small, content-first publishing system. It pairs the feeling of a printed notebook—warm paper, ink, generous reading space—with the parts of the web that make technical writing useful: source code, maths, diagrams, living demos, and talks that can be read or presented in the browser.

A site for a few kinds of work

The content model keeps the different modes of writing distinct without making publishing cumbersome. Essays use an editorial serif and a more literary reading treatment; technical posts switch to a geometric sans and monospace code; project pages use MDX when an explanation needs an interactive element. Each collection has typed front matter for the things readers encounter—title, date, description, tags, cover image, and publication status—so drafts stay out of the public listings and RSS feed until they are ready.

The writing surface has a few capabilities built in rather than bolted on per post:

• Code fences are highlighted with a palette chosen to sit comfortably on the sepia theme.
• Inline and display mathematics are rendered with KaTeX.
• Mermaid blocks become diagrams that follow the site’s light and dark modes.
• Images, metadata, RSS, a sitemap, and structured data are produced as part of the same publishing pass.

Mostly static, selectively alive

Astro compiles the site into static HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and optimised assets. That keeps the ordinary act of reading fast and resilient: there is no server application to wake up for an essay or a project page. A GitHub Actions workflow runs the production build on every push to main and publishes the generated dist directory to GitHub Pages.

Static does not mean inert. Shared Astro components provide the site frame, navigation, theme control, metadata, and the reading layouts. When a page needs behaviour, it can embed a Vue component as an island: the component’s JavaScript is sent only for that feature and hydrates when it becomes visible. This little counter is the simplest example:

–Stars: 3+

Because project pages are MDX, a component can sit alongside its explanation instead of being exiled to a separate demo page—useful for small playgrounds, charts, embeds, or an interface worth trying in place.

Talks as part of the archive

The slides section treats presentations as first-class work rather than a list of outbound links. Older talks remain embedded from SpeakerDeck. Newer talks can live in the repository as self-contained Reveal.js decks—HTML, CSS, and any images—served at their own stable deck URL. The talk page frames each local deck in the site, with a direct full-screen launcher for presenting it; visitors can also browse the slides archive like the rest of the writing.

The result is intentionally not a general-purpose CMS. It is a lightweight, version-controlled place to publish essays, notes, projects, and presentations in forms that suit the material.