Design exploration

One theme, several habitats

The goal is a personal system that can hold long-form writing, Octant explainers, project dashboards, and maybe even a shell prompt without pretending to be a corporate portal. Clean, technical, a little warm, and allowed to smile when the work calls for it.

Compare directions Read the brief

Three starting directions

Each direction uses the same underlying tokens and components, but changes the surface mix, density, and voice. The eventual theme can support all three as modes.

Option A

Field notebook

A reader-first blog skin: warm paper content on a dark technical frame. This keeps long posts comfortable while making the site feel current. It is the least risky path for Network Brouhaha.

Best for: blog homepage, posts, link pages, personal essays, conference notes.

Readable Personal Low maintenance Good print/PDF story

May 2026

Back in the lab, mostly on purpose

Notes on building useful infrastructure at home without making future-you file a grievance.

Why Octant exists Homelab, agents, operations

Cloud networking mistakes I keep seeing BGP, routing, humility

Option B

Lab console

A darker, diagram-forward mode for Octant. It borrows the Instinct-style grid and glow discipline, then makes it friendlier with amber and berry accents. It should feel like a useful operator surface, not a movie terminal.

Best for: Octant landing page, architecture explainers, service catalogs, runbooks, live-ish status summaries.

Diagram-forward Technical Docs plus dashboard Great for Octant

octant.foo docs / topology / runbooks

Octant hybrid lab framework

Healthy enough

Jerry Nomad Consul Ceph OSD

Bobby Nomad Consul Ceph OSD

Billy Nomad Consul Ceph OSD

1Password Terraform Ansible Tailscale

Option C

Workbench

A more modular app/docs direction. It treats posts, docs, command output, project cards, and token exports as equal citizens. This is the strongest long-term system if the theme grows into CLI/TUI tooling.

Best for: project microsites, dashboards, generated reports, CLI docs, agent output pages, internal tools.

Reusable Component-driven CLI/TUI friendly Slightly more build work

Project workbench

Reusable patterns for useful things

Explain the systemArchitecture pages, diagrams, glossary

Show the stateStatus tables, version cards, drift notes

Teach the workflowRunbooks, commands, failure modes

matt@octant:~$ octant status
cluster: steady
nomad: 3 servers
consul: 9 members
ceph: check before touching anything

theme: shamsway.workbench
accent: teal + amber
mood: useful, not precious

Reusable guidance

The shared theme should be a small operating system for presentation, not just a blog facelift.

Token-first

Keep colors, spacing, type, radii, shadows, and syntax colors in one source that can export to SCSS, JSON, and terminal palettes.

Surface modes

Use the same components across blog, docs, app, and terminal surfaces. Change density and background, not the whole identity.

Personality budget

Let humor live in examples, microcopy, and post voice. Keep navigation, docs, and status surfaces plain and dependable.