Why I rebuilt my site

Hi, I’m Tuan Giang — thanks for visiting.

For a long time this site ran on a tool I genuinely loved: the Obsidian Digital Garden plugin. I’d write notes in Obsidian, hit publish, and they’d appear online with linked notes and a clean reading view. It was the thing that finally got me writing down the real problems I run into and how I actually solved them — networks, automation, code, and the running and pickleball that keep me sane.

But over time I started bumping into its edges. So I rebuilt the whole thing — working with Claude — on my own stack. The old site isn’t gone: you can still visit it at old.tuangiang.com. This is the story of why, and what changed.

What I loved about the old site

The Digital Garden’s whole ideology fit how I think: write in markdown, keep it low-friction, and let the notes link to each other. I didn’t want a heavy CMS or a content calendar — I wanted to capture a fix while it was fresh and publish it without ceremony. That ethos is the part I never wanted to lose.

Where I hit the wall

The catch is that everything lived inside the plugin. The layout, the theme, the features — I got what the plugin gave me, and customizing past that meant fighting it. I kept wanting things it wasn’t built for: a distinctive design, a real search, a navigation that fit my content, and live pieces of my life pulled in from other services. Every idea ran into the same ceiling: I was bound to the plugin, not to my own site.

Rebuilding it — with Claude

So I rebuilt on Astro, pairing with Claude to design and write the whole thing collaboratively. The key move: markdown is still the input. I write an article in plain markdown, hand it to the agent, and it gets cleaned up and published — same low-friction ethos as before, no Obsidian required. The difference is that now I own the stack underneath it, so there’s no ceiling. When I want a new feature, I describe it and we build it.

What I kept

Markdown-first writing — capture a fix, publish without ceremony.
Real problems, real solutions — the technical writeups, organized by topic.
The personal stuff — running, pickleball, the Vietnam-to-Hawaii story on my about page.
The mission — chase greatness, and build real relationships and a collaborative space between me, my clients, and my community here in Hawaii.
The old site itself, preserved at old.tuangiang.com.

What I gained

A design I control — light/dark themes, a distinctive look, and a layout built around my writing.
Fast navigation — a category sidebar and a ⌘K search to jump to any article.
Live integrations — my GitHub commit activity, Strava, and my pickleball playlist, pulled right onto the page.
Room to grow — I can add new features and integrations whenever I want (running stats straight from my phone and a contact form are next), instead of waiting on a plugin to support them.

Why this route made sense

A few things made the rebuild worth it:

No lock-in. I’m no longer limited by one plugin’s roadmap — the site can evolve in any direction I take it.
The ideology survived. I kept the part that mattered (markdown, low friction, sharing what I learn) and dropped only the constraints.
Low-friction iteration. Building with Claude means changes are a conversation — I describe what I want, preview it, and ship it. Markdown stays the input; the heavy lifting is handled.
It’s mine. The design, the features, the data I show — all under my control, and easy to extend as I think of new things to build.

I hope it offers you some insight, a little laughter, and some general fun. Learn more about me, or let’s connect.