Two structural changes, not tweaks. The current format is the thing being replaced.
1. /about → the static identity page. SHIPPED. Turned into a plain, static,
"ai-researcher / academia" page: no motion, no islands, fast, readable. This
becomes the canonical answer to "who is this person" — the page to link in a bio
and the one AI search surfaces should cite. Today that answer only exists on the
intro doorway (intro.alexgaoth.com), which canonicalizes away.
Decided: academic register within the existing ink/mono system — Space Mono/Grotesk, black on white, one narrow column, zero motion, structure carries the sobriety. No DESIGN.md exception needed. Fold the intro site's tldr (Math-CS @ UCSD · building Signalor · interning at IBM/Bloomberg · "talk to me abt…") into this page; the intro site then has no unique content left.
2. / → a scroll-driven WebGL layer. PARKED, fifth attempt.
Five concepts built, none kept. Four (folding sheet, ink star chart, transit
map, handscroll) were judged not bold enough and sit on the home-3d
branch. The fifth — "one stroke 一笔", a single calligraphic brushstroke
dragging down the page, coiling once per act and fraying into four tails that
land on the directory cards — is retired to the home-one-stroke branch.
What the animation should be is an open question again.
master carries no 3D code and no canvas. The homepage is the static ledger
plus the DOM choreography in index.astro (fixed title rise, directory
reveal, progress track, scroll hint). Also retired with the stroke: the two
fixed overlay phrases that used to play over the return stage ("this site is
an index…" / "if you found things here interesting…").
The concept-independent machinery, on home-one-stroke unless noted — a new
style is one file:
astro/src/lib/homeScroll.js— on master, since the DOM choreography uses it. The scroll contract: every visual state is a pure function ofscrollY, so any style runs exactly in reverse when you scroll back. Also reports where the four cards physically are, measured from the DOM.astro/src/lib/homeSceneData.js— the spine: three acts, then four finale cards, derived from the data the site already publishes. Add a project and the animation gains it.astro/src/islands/scenes/registry.js— styles declare id, camera, enabled.scripts/check-scenes.mjs— fails the build if the spine breaks or a scene module has a named export (which silently unmounts the canvas).- The isolation that must not regress: a 4KB eager chunk on
/, three.js behind a dynamic import, zero payload on mobile and underprefers-reduced-motion, and a complete static page without any of it.
Constraints that survive whatever comes next:
- Static HTML stays complete in source — chrome over content, never the content itself. Text stays in the DOM; never text-as-texture.
- Desktop only. Mobile gets the ledger.
- No URL changes (ADDITION-RULES golden rule 1).
- Procedural geometry only on
/— it is the most-crawled route.
Personal website repo for Alex Gao (alexgaoth). Two deployed surfaces:
| Surface | Path | Stack | Host | Domain |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Intro site | / |
Static HTML/CSS/JS | GitHub Pages | intro.alexgaoth.com |
| Main site | /astro |
Astro 5 (+ React islands) | Vercel | alexgaoth.com |
app.alexgaoth.com is a legacy hostname that redirects to alexgaoth.com. The intro site is a
deliberate doorway: it canonicalizes to alexgaoth.com and has no sitemap of its own.
Every page of the main site is static HTML at build time — full per-route meta, canonical, Open
Graph, and JSON-LD in source, with interactivity hydrating as islands. See ADDITION-RULES.md
for how to add content of any kind.
/
index.html, css/, js/ Intro site (GitHub Pages)
source/ Intro site images
robots.txt, CNAME Intro host doorway config
resume.pdf Intro-site copy of the resume
.nojekyll REQUIRED — GH Pages must not run Jekyll over /astro
scripts/ audit-raw-html.mjs (SEO audit), send-thought-notification.py
workers/gallery-list/ Cloudflare Worker listing the gallery R2 bucket
.github/workflows/ Buttondown email on new thought
/astro The main site (Vercel, root directory = astro)
src/pages/ One file per route; rss.xml/sitemap.xml/llms.txt are endpoints
src/layouts/BaseLayout.astro Site-wide head: meta, canonical, OG, base JSON-LD
src/islands/ React islands (now board, regents scene, gallery grid, ink canvas)
src/data/ content.js, profileData.js, homeRailData.js, nowData.js,
poetryData.js, thoughts/*.md (content collection)
src/lib/ thoughts/gallery/projects/supabase helpers
src/config/site.js SITE constants, APP_ROUTES, NAVIGATION_ITEMS — single source for URLs/nav
public/ Static assets; profile.json is the canonical "now" data
/ · /about · /resume · /projects · /projects/:slug (featured) · /thoughts ·
/thoughts/:slug · /writing · /quotes · /now · /art · /gallery · /regents ·
/poetry · /poetry/en · /ci · /ci/en
cd astro
npm install
npm run dev # local dev server
npm run build # static build into astro/dist (validates thought frontmatter)Guest slips on /now need astro/.env with PUBLIC_SUPABASE_URL and
PUBLIC_SUPABASE_ANON_KEY (same values live in the Vercel project settings).
Verify a build the way a crawler sees it:
node scripts/audit-raw-html.mjs astro/dist index.html:/ about.html:/about
node scripts/audit-raw-html.mjs https://alexgaoth.com / /about /thoughts # against productionPush to master deploys both halves: GitHub Pages serves the repo root (intro), Vercel builds
/astro (root directory astro, cleanUrls on). If a GitHub Pages build wedges in "building",
re-kick it: gh api -X POST repos/{owner}/{repo}/pages/builds.
- Search Console: indexed-page counts, not-indexed reasons, sitemap health, Core Web Vitals.
- Only bump a thought's
modifiedfrontmatter on meaningful edits — it drives sitemaplastmod. - Add internal links when publishing; keep titles specific; keep structured data matching visible text.
- Quarterly: test a few identity/topic prompts in AI search surfaces (Google AI Mode, Perplexity, ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot) and note whether site pages get cited.