Showcase / Controlled retrofit
Portfolio Journal
The existing Journal browse → article flow, rebuilt for comparison with a fixed committed baseline and a tunable editorial direction.
Screenshot captured from this working local prototype on September 23, 2026. Manual implementation; no private Design Skill output.
01 / Starting point
The baseline is pinned.
The target is Jay's own Next.js/React Portfolio Journal at commit abb2f05. That commit contains four published post records. A fifth record exists only in unrelated, uncommitted edits in the original checkout; it was not copied into this worktree and was not removed from the original checkout.
This is a controlled reconstruction of the selected browse → article flow, not an archived deployment. The four committed archive titles, descriptions, topics, and dates are retained. The selected AI workflow article keeps its prose and key diagram content; diagrams are simplified for this comparison. Its three other archive links open the original live articles. The actual Portfolio Journal continues separately.
02 / Before and after
Same reading task. Different hierarchy.
Browse the selected article in either view. The baseline is fixed; only the refined view responds to the Configurator.
03 / Design decisions
Give each article a clearer invitation.
- 01
Make the archive scannable.
Topic, title, summary, date, and reading time remain, with a larger hierarchy and quieter decorative media.
- 02
Protect the reading rail.
The article headline gains room to breathe while body copy stays on a comfortable rail. The diagrams are reconstructed as text-first structures.
- 03
Keep the comparison honest.
The baseline does not change with profile controls. The refined view does, and its profile persists into the selected article route.
- Skill version
- None used. A working private v0 has not produced this retrofit.
- Design Profile
- Public schema v1; selected: garden, studio, softened, balanced. Inspect or export ↗
- Manual edits
- Archive and selected article reconstructed from the committed source; diagrams simplified; visual hierarchy, layout, styling, and link handling manually edited.
- Quality checks
- The baseline commit and metadata were inspected. The public profile parser and contrast checks have automated tests. Responsive, keyboard, and reduced-motion review remains pending before publication.
Original Portfolio Journal remains at jaylawrence.me/blog