Uses

The tools I reach for every day. Updated annually or when something major changes. Inspired by the usesthis.com convention.

Hardware

Computer

Display

Keyboard

Pointing device

Audio

Operating system & shell

OS

Linux (Ubuntu-based)

Shell

bash

Terminal

Editor & coding

Editor

AI pair

Claude Code — every line of this site's infra was paired with it.

Version control

Git, hosted on GitHub (private).

This site's stack

Framework

Astro 6 (static output) with React 19 for interactive islands only.

Build

Vite 7 (ships with Astro 6), pnpm 10, Node 22.

Lint & format

Biome 2.4.12 — Rust-based, replaces ESLint + Prettier.

Typechecker

TypeScript 5.9 + astro check for .astro files.

Content

Astro Content Collections + MDX via @astrojs/mdx.

CSS

Plain CSS, no Tailwind. All tokens and patterns import from the Observatory Design System at src/ds/ (symlinked to field-data/dist/current/ during development).

Fonts

Fraunces (display), Instrument Sans (UI), JetBrains Mono (data) — self-hosted as woff2 under public/fonts/. No CDN.

Hosting & infrastructure

Hosting

Cloudflare Pages (static output, no adapter needed).

DNS

Cloudflare — apex animeshdesigns.com with www redirect.

Database

Cloudflare D1 (SQLite at the edge) for first-party analytics only. Three tables: pageviews, internal_clicks, outbound_clicks. 90-day retention.

Analytics

Custom first-party beacon written from scratch. No Google Analytics, no third-party scripts, no cookies. See privacy.

CI

GitHub Actions — pre-merge lint/typecheck/build, weekly D1 retention + backup.

Dependencies

Dependabot weekly with grouped minor/patch PRs.

Perf tracking

Lighthouse baselines committed to lighthouse/, re-run quarterly.

Design

Design system

Observatory — my own DS, published under field-data/dist/current/. Tokens, obs-* pattern classes, material treatment (bevels, grain, shadows) baked into surfaces.

Typography

Three-font system: Fraunces / Instrument Sans / JetBrains Mono. Same three on every Observatory product.

Design tools