osaldvha.org
Personal portfolio and research site built with Astro and Tailwind. Ethereal brutalist design system with custom canvas scenes, retro terminal UI components, pixel-art assets, ASCII word spirals, film grain overlay, and a content workflow that authors all pages as Markdown in Obsidian.
osaldvha.org is Oshen Davidson’s personal portfolio and research site. Astro static site generator, Tailwind for styles, custom canvas scenes, retro terminal UI components, pixel-art assets, and an Obsidian-first content workflow where every page is a Markdown file in a content collection.
The gap it closes
A research-and-engineering portfolio site needs to be content-first (the writing and the work are the product), fast (every visitor is probably a recruiter or hiring manager with limited patience), and distinct enough that it does not read as a templated portfolio. Off-the-shelf portfolio templates fail the third constraint. Hand-rolled CMS-backed sites fail the first, because the content tooling is slower than just writing Markdown. The site needs an authoring workflow that does not require leaving Obsidian.
Architecture
Content collections
Eleven schema-validated content collections, one per page type: studies (case studies / research), writing (blog), portfolio (categorized portfolio entries), projects (this collection), skills, roles (work history), toolstack, competencies, contact, about, and pages (the cross-cutting layout strings).
Each collection loads its Markdown from a content/<collection> directory outside the site directory. The split keeps the source-of-truth Obsidian vault portable: no framework-specific syntax in any Markdown file, no JSX in .md, plain YAML frontmatter.
Detail page routing
Two dynamic routes consume the content. A /research/[id] route renders one detail page per studies entry. A /portfolio/[id] route renders one detail page per projects entry. Both routes use a two-column layout: article body on the left with a prose style, sticky aside on the right with a TOC computed from H2 and H3 headings, optional links (Live, Repo), tag chips, and a methodology block.
Custom canvas and retro terminal components
Island components for the visual identity: time-aware sun/moon, twinkling stars, dithered imagery, ASCII word spirals on the research index, retro terminal “skill monitor” components with a typewriter effect and Notepad-style popup modals, film grain overlay, and a custom starburst cursor.
Content workflow
All page bodies authored in Obsidian. YAML frontmatter is hand-written. Astro reads from the content directory at build time. Draft pages are excluded from production builds. Editor for code is Cursor; editor for content is Obsidian.
What shipped
Production portfolio and research site at osaldvha.org. Eleven content collections, two dynamic detail routes (research and portfolio), and an Obsidian-first content workflow. Every page authored as plain Markdown, schema-validated at build time.