Telling the story

You just shipped a real artifact — a personal site, designed and deployed end-to-end. That's the asset. This page is about turning the asset into a story a recruiter, hiring manager, or interviewer can pick up in 30 seconds and remember in 30 days.

The frame: what you decided, not what the agent typed

The biggest mistake people make talking about AI-assisted work is summarising the output: "I built a portfolio site with Antigravity and Cloud Run." Recruiters see ten of those a week. They have no signal in them.

The frame that lands is the decisions: what you chose, what you rejected, why. The agent makes the typing free; the choices are still yours, and that's what's interesting about you.

CV phrasing that works

Bad: "Built a personal site using Google's stack with AI assistance."

Better: "Designed and deployed a personal career site (Antigravity + Cloud Run). Chose serverless containers over a static host so the site could grow into an API later. Decided not to use Firebase — would have introduced a vendor lock-in I didn't need at this scale."

Notice the second one tells you something about the person — that they think about future-proofing, that they consider trade-offs explicitly, that they can defend the negative space. That's what hiring managers buy.

Interview talking points

Expect questions like "Walk me through your portfolio site" or "How did you decide to use [X]?" Prepare answers in this shape:

The AI question, addressed honestly

You will be asked: "How much of this did you write yourself?" Don't dodge it. The honest answer scores higher than a defensive one.

Try: "The agent wrote most of the typing. I made the architectural choices, picked the libraries, decided what to test, and reviewed every diff before merging. The way I think about it: the agent is a fast junior I gave a clear spec to. I'm the reviewer."

That answer says: I know what agents are good and bad at, I have judgement about my own work, and I'm not embarrassed about how I built things. All three are good signals.

Five things to put in your repo's README

The README is your career-narrative landing page. Spend 20 minutes on it.

  1. Live URL. One link, prominent. Recruiters click first, read second.
  2. Why this exists. One paragraph on the problem you're solving for yourself.
  3. What you decided. 3–5 bullets — your real choices, with one-line justifications. "Cloud Run over App Engine because…"
  4. What surprised you. One or two things you learned that you didn't expect. Genuine post-mortem signal.
  5. What's next. One bullet — the next decision you're considering. Shows the project isn't dead and you have direction.

Where to put this artifact

Stay in the top 5%

The artifact is the ticket. Holding the seat takes weekly effort. Four habits decide who's still working in 2027:

  1. Use it or lose it. The skill decays in weeks. Run an agent on something real every week — even something small. Don't let today's leverage rot.
  2. Stay current. The field shifts every month. Pick one channel — YouTube, a newsletter, a podcast — and check it weekly. Don't drift.
  3. Build in public. Post the repos. Write what worked. The engineers getting hired are the ones the world can see building.
  4. The market is brutal. Hiring in 2026 is the hardest it's ever been. The reps you put in now are what separate "employed" from "looking." Show up.

Six weeks of inaction puts you back. The workshop is the start of a habit, not the end of a project.

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