The rules I describe for client work are applied to my own site. Same gates, same measurement, same honesty.
Source: next build output and the lighthouse report. Full detail on /evidence.
Portfolio sites usually sit at one of two extremes: a ready-made template, or an unfinished design experiment. Neither answers the question "can this person deliver?"
This site exists to answer it: a site that applies its own rules to itself and publishes the measurements.
For two languages and a fixed set of strings, a dependency like next-intl asked for more than it gave. lib/i18n.ts builds paths, lib/messages.ts holds the copy; the type check catches a missing key at build time.
Cost: Adding a language means duplicating every message file by hand.
Cases live in lib/content.ts with a TypeScript type. They are validated at build time; nothing is parsed at runtime and every page is static.
Cost: Writing content requires an editor; there is no panel.
The form sends nothing to a server: it fills the fields and opens the mail client. No API key, no personal data stored, nothing to declare under KVKK.
Cost: Conversion cannot be measured; I do not know which service gets picked.
Overflow is measured, not hidden: scrollWidth is compared at 320, 390, 768 and 1440 px. If it overflows, the layout is fixed.
Cost: Four more measurements after every layout change.
Colour, radius and type live as tokens in app/globals.css. Components use token classes such as bg-bg and text-ink; a theme change touches one file.
Cost: Habits from Tailwind's default palette had to go.
The source files were JPEG with no alpha channel. The background was cleared with a flood fill and a 32-bit PNG was produced. Vectorisation is still pending.
Cost: Extra weight on non-retina screens; SVG would scale freely.
Applying your rule to your own site is harder than explaining it to a client. Saying "Lighthouse 100" is easy; saying it while LCP is 3.4 seconds on mobile is not possible. Removing the large hero image was not an aesthetic decision: I changed the design because the gate demanded it.
Ercan Labs