Rebuilding My Personal Website with Codex and Claude: A Practical Review

Ben's Bites · rss · 2026-08-28

Ben Tossell shares his detailed process and experience rebuilding his personal website using AI coding assistants (Codex and Claude).

Design and Iteration:

Initially attempted to mimic an Agent app interface, having Codex generate a prototype. He established a rapid iteration loop by taking screenshots, annotating feedback in tldraw, and sending it back to the model for adjustments.
Found that Claude is better at inferring design intent, whereas GPT requires more specific feedback.
Experienced "scope creep" during development by adding too many interactions, ultimately deciding to scrap it and return to a simpler canvas style.

Technical Implementation and Deployment:

Content Management: Configured the site to pull content from individual Markdown files for easy maintenance.
Deployment: Used here.now for rapid deployment. The agent directly configured Vercel DNS records to point the domain to the new site, eliminating manual setup.
Animation Details: Guided the agent via text prompts to create a walking mascot animation, iteratively refining limb movements and interaction logic.

Key Takeaways:

Real requirements often only become clear after seeing a working version, hence the practice of asking agents for multiple versions for comparison.
The "design-annotate-fix" loop is an efficient workflow for AI-assisted development.

More from coding & agent