What does Papa Dragon believe, and how sure?

Rereading the notes in this garden, I noticed I hand down quite a few verdicts, and have never once said how sure I am.

AI helped me gather this book from the notes and the decision log. Every line has to have something to point back to, and I read it before it goes up.

Tiếng Việt: Ba rồng đang tin điều gì, và chắc tới đâu?.

I borrowed the idea from the digital gardens that keep a Codex Vitae: a public book of what you believe, with how sure you are, and a record of what changed. Mine has three levels. I'd bet on it means being wrong would truly surprise me. I lean toward it means I act on it, but I'll listen if someone argues. Still guessing means I'm trying it, with nothing in hand to defend it.

What I'd bet on

A personal site doesn't need a framework. On June 22 I tore out Astro, React, Tailwind, MDX and Vite. The whole site is now about 3,400 lines of TypeScript, with no dependencies and no build step. In the four-plus months since, the garden has gained a terminal view and a letter box, and I haven't once missed what I removed. The colophon has the longer version.

If a machine can block it, don't ask for it in words. I learned this the night one pkill -f cat closed every app on my Mac. A written rule sits a hundred lines away; a 43-line hook stands right in front of the command. Notes work the same way: leak an internal machine name or slip out of voice and the review step goes red, with nobody having to remember to check.

Writing about what you built is the most thorough test. Writing the note on the terminal view turned up three bugs that had been sleeping there. Writing the note on Vietnamese fonts is how I learned that for four months, everyone on Chrome on a Mac had been seeing Times New Roman. Lately, every note I've measured carefully has turned up something more.

The seed has to be a person's, even if AI does most of the tending. AI writes code, checks sentences, drafts whole notes, and I don't hide that. But a note only goes up when I nod, and I've sent one back for reading short and robotic. What scares me isn't AI helping to write. It's a site where no one answers for each word anymore.

What I lean toward

Count before you trust your eyes, except for voice. To my eye the font looked fine; counting 146 letters showed Palatino missing exactly one, ớ. I had seen a Bun.spawn bug on one version; measuring 12 versions showed all of them have it. Yet mảnh vườn loses to the more familiar word 14 to 1 on Google and I keep it, because that's how it sounds right to me. Where one side ends and the other begins, I still sort by feel.

Vietnamese gets written first, English follows. In October I rewrote every Vietnamese note this way, and the em dashes went from 67 to 2. That number only shows the sentences changed shape. Whether they read more naturally, I have only my own ear as a witness.

Old things aren't finished, if you're willing to dig. A TV box bought in 2016 sat in a drawer for nearly a year, and five days later it was running Debian on Linux 6.18. I only lean here, because priced in money those five days would have bought a new box for less. What I got back was fun and things learned, not savings.

You can live fine without measuring readers. The garden has no tracking, metrics or analytics, and that promise I hold firmly. What I'm unsure of is its price. I don't know which notes get read or whether anyone uses the terminal view, and I may be writing for exactly one person: me.

What I'm still guessing

Planting one note a day will make the garden better. Today makes five days in a row, where before there was a gap of nearly four months. I guess that steady hands make better writing, but this may also be the shortest road to a garden full of weeds. With AI helping, planting is very fast, so that's the spot to watch.

A private letter box suits this garden better than public comments. Since October 29 every note has had a box under it that writes only to me, and this morning it's empty. Four days say nothing yet. Maybe people don't like writing letters; maybe nobody has read to the end of a note.

Webmentions can wait. Notes already carry microformats for other blogs to read, but I haven't opened a door to receive or send webmentions. My guess is that no blog needs to talk to this garden yet. When someone really links here, I'll think again.

Where I've changed my mind

This part is why the book exists. When I change my mind I add a line, and the old line stays.

• June 22, 2026. I used to believe a personal site needed a proper stack. I tore it all out and miss nothing.
• June 23, 2026. I used to call this place by a word as wide as an estate, and myself a little dragon. Now it's mảnh vườn (a small plot) and papa dragon, because the place is small and I'm a dad.
• October 18, 2026. I used to label pictures with a Vietnamese phrase that sounded grand. Counted, the whole Vietnamese web has 8 pages that write it that way. Now it says do AI tạo.
• October 29, 2026. I used to believe short was good. Cutting the terminal note to 396 words made it read short and robotic. Now it runs about 1,400 words; I cut repetition, not the story.
• October 30, 2026. I used to believe ui-serif had settled Vietnamese type, because it looked fine on Safari. Chrome ignores it.

What I don't know yet

• I don't know whether my confidence is worth anything. This book is one day old, and nothing I'd bet on has been tested long enough to show whether I'm too sure too often.
• I don't know how often to re-score it, or whether to open it only when I truly change my mind.
• This book only holds what I believe about making things and writing. The bigger things I haven't written down, and I don't know whether they belong here.

If something above looks wrong to you, write me a letter below. A good argument at the right spot earns me one more line in the part about changing my mind.