Building a Hugo website with AI (using Cursor)
I’ve been meaning to create a personal website, using a static site generator, for a while. The main hold up was the time it would take to pick a generator, figure out how to use it, and then build the website.
Turns out, it only took a few decades of advancements in AI and an IDE that tightly incorporates cutting-edge LLM tools into its process to make this something that thought I could do quickly enough to finally motivate me to get started!
Fittingly, the first post is be about my experiences using Cursor to build this website with Hugo.
Why Hugo?
There is no big reason behind the choice other than:
- At the time of choice it was the second most popular static site generator (after Next.js) on Jamstack.org.
- It is written in Go, which I have a soft spot for.
- The Paper theme was nice enough.
Why Cursor?
I found out about it when a colleague of mine recommended it. I will eventually try others. They are all so nascent it felt that one was as good as the other right now. I’ve already been using Github Copilot so was curious to understand what a deeper integration with LLMs would be like.
WHy Hugo with Cursor?
I felt that starting with a relatively simple project would be a good way to figure out how to use Cursor and learn more about Hugo. I am not dealing with a huge codebase and complex requirements. We are generating static content using text, HTML, Markdown and some custom CSS. Should be about as simple as it gets, right?
First impressions
Writing the content
Writing content with an AI constantly over your shoulder is both infuriating and exhilarating. It is infuriating because it invades your writing process and you have to either re-think or re-write the content. It keeps grabbing your attention. It is exhilarating because you can write a lot of content very quickly. Just tab away and let it write.
It is also disconcerting because I don’t know that I would have written this same sort of post with the same ideas or style without the AI. Even if I don’t use the suggestions, I am reading them. Reading them means they are influencing my thinking.
Finally, the most annoying part is when it tries to suggest content that it blatantly made up. Fictitious links, made up book titles, article titles, etc. The relationship that creates between generator and writer is adversarial. For example, a few paragraphs ago when I mentioned that a colleague recommended Cursor, it generated a link to a LinkedIn profile! There is no introspective process to tell it “hold on, you don’t know who this colleague don’t generate any links”. So you constantly have to be on the lookout for these things.
Building the website
Using Cursor to build the website was an overall positive experience in that the overall time saved and speed of execution makes up for the very notable drawbacks.
Learning to work with the AI
I didn’t want to spend too much time learning Hugo but I did need to spend some time to learn how to best make good use of Cursor that was trying to then manipulate Hugo. I am not sure what would have been faster - my focussing just on Hugo or me fighting with Cursor that was fighting with Hugo 🙂.
Ultimately, learning to work with the AI is going to serve me across a number of different projects so I think we will notch this one in the win column.
The AI is a terrible engineer
This was the most annoying part. I wanted to have a clean website setup. However, Cursor would often suggest hacks that would get me what I wanted but meant that I strayed too far from how I am supposed to use Hugo so as to have an easy to maintain and clear setup.
The most obvious example is that it would constantly try and overwrite the main Paper theme setup. While that actually got the end result I asked for it also just deleted about half of the features of the theme to get me there. I had to spend time pulling things back so that we had a semblance of a clean setup and I am not 100% sure I caught all the instances of where it was trying to do this.
The AI is a great hacker
While it is not a good engineer, the AI is a great hacker. Want a little shadow on your CSS? A better layout using flexbox? Or a script to automate deployment? These things you can get done in no time. The thing that worries me is that I don’t have the skills to evaluate if the CSS produced is good or bad. I just know that it works and it is not that important to me so I can live with it.
Conclusion
As I mentioned overall it was a positive experience. I’ve learned a lot about Cursor, definitely know a bit about Hugo now and I have a website. I would not have gotten here (or it would have been much more boring and slower) to get here without Cursor. I am worried that I don’t really understand everything about my website setup (simple as it is). As a hands-on developer I am used to having a clear understanding of what I am doing and how it works. I don’t have that here. I am not sure if I will ever get it. I am not sure if I want to. I am not sure if I need to.
What will I gain with the time and the ability to do more while I understand less?
That I think is a good framing of the broader question of living and working with AI that we will be exploring. 🤨