The week started with a single, heavy commit on Monday, December 30, 2024. It was the kind of move that looks impressive in the logs but is just the necessary first step in building anything real. I pushed sixty-three files and about twenty-four thousand lines of code into the magicunicorn.tech repository in one shot. It is a Vite and React application, so the stack is standard. I included components for lazy loading images, error boundaries, a service worker, a web manifest, Sparkles as background decoration, and a footer. It is the skeleton of a site. I removed two and a half thousand lines in the same commit, likely discarding something I was replacing, so even the first entry in the record was not a clean whiteboard.
There is no dramatic arc to that day because there was only one move. You lay down the first stone and hope it holds. The record starts now.
By Tuesday, December 31, 2024, the focus shifted from code to infrastructure. I spent the day containerizing the Magic Unicorn site so I would not have to guess about deployments anymore. The day consisted of three commits, all "initial commit from your app" messages. The first commit handled the boring but necessary tooling: package.json and tailwind.config.js. This gave the build tools something to compile against.
I spent the day containerizing the Magic Unicorn site so I would not have to guess about deployments anymore.
The second commit was the anchor. It brought in the Dockerfile, .dockerignore, README.md, docker-compose.yml, and docker/nginx.conf, along with scripts/deploy.sh. These six files turn a directory of JSX into something I can hand to a server and trust. The Dockerfile is straightforward, the nginx config routes traffic, and the deploy script ties it all together. The README documents what I built so future Aaron does not have to reverse-engineer it.
The third commit was cleanup and content. I tightened the Dockerfile and .dockerignore, dropped the generic scripts for the docker variants that work with compose, and added the actual pages: Home, Contact, and Blog. Seven files changed, mostly deleting rough drafts and replacing them with working versions. I added 119 lines and removed 112. The site now has pages to show for itself. That is how you close out a year. You ship something tangible, write it down, and walk away from a repo that actually works.
The week broke with a new year. On Friday, January 3, 2025, I started with scaffolding. I wanted three new project bones on the filesystem so the rest of the week would have somewhere solid to hang. By the close, each repo had a working React shell.
The first repo was shawns-services-repo. A single initial commit brought in the whole Vite project. I included index.html, Tailwind via postcss.config.js, and the full src tree with App.jsx, Navbar.jsx, Footer.jsx, and page stubs for About, Booking, and Contact. I also added package.json and package-lock.json. A second commit brought the README.md, and then I moved on.
I repeated the exact same pattern for shawns.services. It has an identical structure and file list, just with a different domain name slapped on the front. It felt mechanical, but repetition is what scaffolding is. The third repo, superiorbsolutions.com, followed the same arc with one small variation. The page list included Home.jsx instead of Booking.jsx, and it shipped fifteen files instead of sixteen. That one took three commits total, but the rhythm was the same.
In total, I made ten commits across four repositories this week. The magicunicorn.tech repo took four, while shawns-services-repo, shawns.services, and superiorbsolutions.com each took two, while magicunicorn.tech took four. Nothing was flashy. It was just pattern recognition and execution. Six commits across three new repos created clean starting points for the week. Sometimes the best engineering decision is picking a pattern and committing to it.
The week moved from a single heavy launch to a spread of steady, repetitive groundwork. I went from laying the first stone to pouring the foundation for three other structures. There were no bugs to squash or features to argue over. Just the quiet work of making sure the tools are ready and the files are in the right places. It counts. Every build starts with a first commit, and this week I made sure the first ones were solid.
Real product captures — click any to enlarge.