Role
Designer, Developer & End User
Timeline
3 days
Stack
Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, Sanity, Vercel and Resend
The Challenge
For years, my portfolio lived in Webflow.
It was fast to build, easy to maintain, and, most importantly, it allowed me to create websites without writing code. Like many designers, I happily paid for a CMS plan because it was the simplest way to publish projects and blog posts.
Then AI changed everything.
With tools like Cursor, Claude Code and Codex becoming capable development partners, I realised I was paying for problems that no longer existed. I wasn't limited by my ability to code anymore. I was limited by the platform I had chosen years earlier.
The question became simple:
Could I build something faster, cheaper and more flexible using an AI-native workflow?
Rethinking the Stack
The goal wasn't just to redesign my portfolio.
I wanted to completely rethink how it was built.
That meant finding a solution that gave me:
- A modern CMS
- Free hosting
- Full ownership of the code
- Better performance
- Freedom to customise anything
After exploring a number of options, I landed on a combination of Sanity and Vercel.
Sanity would replace Webflow's paid CMS, while Vercel would handle deployment and hosting. Together they provided everything I needed on their free hobby plans.
Building Alongside AI
Rather than treating AI as an assistant for isolated tasks, I treated it like another member of the development team.
Cursor became my primary workspace, while Claude Code and Codex helped explore different implementation approaches, debug issues, generate components and refactor code.
Instead of dragging components around a visual editor, I described what I wanted, reviewed the output, refined the implementation and shipped improvements almost immediately.
The process felt less like building a website and more like directing a highly capable engineering team.
Rebuilding the CMS
One of my biggest concerns was losing Webflow's excellent content editing experience.
That disappeared as soon as I started using Sanity Studio.
Sanity gave me a beautifully designed editorial experience while allowing the front-end to remain completely independent. Projects, blog posts and future content all became structured data rather than pages tied directly to a visual editor.
The result was a CMS that felt every bit as capable as Webflow's, but without locking me into an expensive hosting plan.
In just a few days I had rebuilt my portfolio using an entirely new workflow.
The final result delivered:
- A fully custom website built with AI-assisted development
- A modern headless CMS
- Free hosting
- Lower ongoing costs
- Complete control over the codebase
- A platform that's significantly easier to extend in the future
Perhaps the biggest outcome wasn't technical at all.
This project fundamentally changed how I think about building products.
As designers, we've traditionally had to choose between visual builders like Webflow or learning to become developers. AI has blurred that line. Today, it's possible to move beyond no-code without becoming a full-time engineer.
For me, this wasn't simply a portfolio migration.
It was proof that AI-native ways of working are changing what individual designers are capable of building.