I’ve been running the Hugo Terminal theme here for a while; it’s a great default, but I wanted the site to have a bit more of a signature look. So I spent an evening with OpenCode driven by Kimi K2.6 (hosted on OpenCode Go), and turned it into something that feels more like mine.

It was, honestly, a surprisingly satisfying way to work. I’d describe what I wanted; OpenCode would draft the change; I’d push back where it overshot. The whole thing felt less like writing CSS and more like art-directing a room.

A few things I’m pleased with:

  • A quieter palette. The Terminal theme is amber on black by default, and amber is wonderful, but all amber, all the time gets tiring. There are subtle adjustments now so the eye has somewhere to rest.
  • A two-column homepage. The latest post sits prominently at the top, the way the front page of a magazine works; older posts fall in below in a tighter grid.
  • An ASCII progress bar pinned to the top. This is the one I love most. As you scroll an article, a row of = characters fills in toward 100%, sticky at the top of the page so you always know how far you’ve come. It’s a small thing; it makes long posts feel less open-ended.

I write about decisively modern things here a lot of the time, but I have a real soft spot for the computers of the 1980s and early 1990s. The BBS years. Before we were all on the Internet; before broadband; before “plug and play.” Back when an ASCII text screen had to do all the heavy lifting, and people got remarkably expressive with the 256 characters they had. Status bars, progress meters, ANSI art logos, double-line borders made of ═ and ╗; an entire visual vocabulary built out of glyphs.

Bringing a touch of that to a 2026 personal site feels right. The medium has changed; the sensibility doesn’t have to.

If you notice anything broken, let me know. And if the progress bar makes you stay on a long post a little longer than you would have otherwise, that’s the whole point.

I’m not really a web designer, but I had fun with this. Messing with CSS is over my head, but OpenCode made it feel like I was just tweaking a few dials. If you have a Hugo site and want to give it a little more personality, I recommend giving it a try. It’s a fun way to make your site feel more like you, without needing to be an expert in web design.