Smarason.is

This is the site you are looking at. It exists to share work, ideas and tools — not to sell anything. No first-party analytics or advertising tracking. Functional cookies remember language and support authenticated areas. The architecture reflects a simple conviction: technology should serve the people who use it.

In the summer of 2026 it moved home. What once stood partly on rented ground — the content in a cloud content service, in someone else's system — now owns everything itself.

Sovereignty

• Own content system. Payload replaced the cloud content service. The content — every article, every podcast — lives in its own database on its own machine.
• Own edge server. The site runs on a small Hetzner machine with Caddy as the only listener. Certificates issued and renewed automatically on our own server, HTTP/3, no middleman — no external proxy any more.
• Own audio and images. Most podcast audio and the site’s own images are self-hosted. Embedded YouTube or Spotify content and video thumbnails can still load from external services.
• Own Git and backups. The code lives on our own Git server; database and media are backed up automatically to a separate storage box every night.

Architecture

• Next.js 16 — App Router, ISR on content pages, server components alongside client-side interactive components.
• Payload 3 + PostgreSQL — structured content, per-document localization (Icelandic default), migrations in production.
• Caddy — automatic TLS, HTTP/3, security headers; the only public listener.
• CrowdSec — community-driven abuse defense at the edge.
• Strict TypeScript — strict mode and noUncheckedIndexedAccess; catches type errors at compile time, with some explicit any exceptions.

Voice and design

Void/copper/bone — an editorial palette in OKLCH, Cormorant paired with DM Sans. Motion serves comprehension, never decoration: no gradients, no glass sheen. The aesthetic is deliberately quiet.

How it's built

Built with Claude Code and agentic systems that handle everything from content to Icelandic language quality — the human hand decides, the machine amplifies. The method is always the same: choose well, verify, deliver on your own foundation.