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The Seven Phases
Each phase has a gate. The agent does not advance until the gate is met, even under pressure, and it asks one thing at a time rather than presenting the whole pipeline at once.
Two questions only: what are you building, and what do you already have. Copy, CV, project screenshots, a logo, hero media, a domain idea. Gaps get logged, not solved.
Gate: it knows the subject and your asset inventory.
The phase that decides whether the site is yours or generic.
- One job. "Get research group leads to email me" is a job. "Portfolio" is not.
- One primary action. Read the CV, book a call, email, star the repo. Exactly one. Everything on the page either serves it or gets cut.
- Register. One word: institutional, academic, editorial, playful. The build is held to that word.
- Non-goals. Written explicitly, together. The highest leverage block in the brief.
- Content. Real copy, real numbers, written by you. Content is an input, not an output.
Gate: the one job, the one action, the register, the non-goals, and draft copy for every section exist in writing.
The phase everyone tries to skip and the one that decides whether the result looks like a template. The agent builds a throwaway brand.html with your real name and your real bio, in two or three genuinely different directions, and makes you pick one.
Gate: exact hex values, exact font names, a type scale, and one named signature element.
The agent writes it, you correct it, then it freezes. Six hundred to a thousand words. See Writing the brief.
Gate: a frozen brief you have read and approved.
You paste the brief into your coding agent and let it build. You come back with output, errors, or screenshots. One concern per iteration. Commit after each working step. Every instruction names what not to touch.
Two or three real iteration cycles is the normal shape of this, not a sign of failure.
Gate: it builds with zero errors and you have seen it render at 375px.
Evidence, not assurances. 375px and a real phone, always incognito, mobile Lighthouse, tab through the whole page, a URL that does not exist to prove the 404 is yours, view source for title and Open Graph, every link clicked.
Then: build locally, push, connect a host that rebuilds on push, buy a domain, point DNS, delete the registrar's parking record, wait for propagation, confirm SSL.
Then: sitemap, robots.txt, JSON-LD, llms.txt, submit to Search Console, link it everywhere your name appears.
Gate 5: evidence, not assurances.
Gate 6: the domain resolves over HTTPS in incognito, on both root and www.
Gate 7: the sitemap is submitted and the shared link renders its card.
Anything requiring your credentials or your card is yours. No agent can log into your registrar, host, or bank, and one that offers to is wrong. If a coding agent claims it deployed the site, it did not.