For years I ran this site as a full CMS — Postgres, auth, an admin dashboard, an upload pipeline. To publish a post I logged into my own website.

Then I realized: I am the only author, and VS Code is a better editor than anything I would ever build.

The realization

• Git already versions every change.
• My editor already has a preview.
• A pull request is a better review flow than a “draft” toggle.
• Static HTML is faster and cheaper than any server I could run.

So the database became a folder. The admin panel became my terminal. The deploy became a git push.

What I gave up

Nothing I missed. No likes counter, no view count in a table (analytics already tracks that), no login screen to maintain. The site got smaller, faster, and more durable — the kind of thing that still works in ten years.