Front-facing redesign (2026-06-02)

We reworked the public front of the site — a new Projects section plus a declutter pass on the existing pages — prompted by a friend’s feedback that the site impressed him even where it sat outside his field. The aim: keep the depth, add a plain-language on-ramp, and cut clutter.

What we built

Projects section (new). A projects/ folder with a data-driven gallery and one page per project, replacing “MG & Kolbs” in the top nav. Six honest post-mortems — Building now: llm-knowledge-base, WNAC, MG & Kolbs, cos; Archived: wnab, Pan’s MG & Kolbs Template — each covering what it is, what worked, what broke, and the lesson. Cards carry screenshots where we have safe ones.

Declutter. Journal cut to three sections with a rebuilt sidebar (dead and “private” links removed, template stubs unpublished); Index folded its two redundant top lists into one “Start here” and dropped the internal status column from the catalog; About leads with a plain-language on-ramp; Home’s hero reads plainer with a newcomer cue; Blog splits posts from collections.

Decisions worth keeping

• Privacy held by construction. Finance projects follow the “method public, money private” doctrine. The WNAC card screenshot is rendered from entirely fake data, never the real dashboard, so no balances reach the public site.
• cos lineage corrected. cos is a current project with a failed terminal chapter: the Textual terminal surfaces were retired, and a static HTML dashboard on WNAC’s design language (cos light, WNAC dark) is the living form. The earlier “Basecamp-style” framing is dropped.
• llm-knowledge-base listed as a project. Including the site in its own Projects section felt recursive, but it is a project, so it stays — first in the row.

Outstanding

• Design notes per project — placeholders sit in each page to fill in.
• Optional: shrink the heavier project screenshots.
• The redesign is committed on the worktree-front-pages-projects branch, not yet merged or pushed live.