Building primitivesam.com in Public
By Hussam Alkurdi
I’ve had various versions of a personal site over the years. Most of them ended up as placeholder pages with a bio and some links. This time I wanted something different — a real home base for everything I’m working on across music, tech, and AI.
Why Astro
I chose Astro because it ships zero JavaScript by default and lets me use components from whatever framework I want. For a content-heavy site like this, that’s exactly what I need. Fast pages, markdown-based content, and the flexibility to add interactive bits where they actually matter.
What I’m building toward
This site isn’t just a portfolio. I want it to be a working notebook — a place where I document what I’m learning, share projects as they evolve, and connect the dots between the different things I’m into. Music production, automation, AI experiments, strategy thinking. It all fits under one roof.
The build-in-public part
I’m committing to sharing the process as I go. Not polished case studies after the fact, but real updates about what I’m building, what’s broken, and what I’m figuring out. If something I learn saves someone else a few hours, that’s a win.
Current stack
- Framework: Astro v5
- Styling: Tailwind CSS
- Content: Markdown with content collections
- Hosting: TBD (leaning Vercel or Cloudflare Pages)
- Design: Custom, minimal, dark-mode first
More updates coming as the site takes shape. Follow along if you’re into this kind of thing.
Get the signal before the noise.
I send occasional emails about what I'm building, what I'm learning, and what's coming next in music and tech — no filler, no spam, just the stuff I'd actually want to read.