Uses

Tools, software, hardware

What I rely on for research, writing, and Strategy Engine work. A snapshot, not a prescription. Tools earn their slot by surviving years of real use.

Last updated .

This site

What runs mariobrcic.com — visible to anyone reading the source. The whole point of /uses/ is honesty about the stack, so this section is the load-bearing one until the rest is owner-confirmed.

  • Astro 5

    Static, no client-side framework. The site ships as plain HTML and CSS — no React, no Vue, no JS-heavy hydration. Fewer moving parts, smaller attack surface.

  • Cloudflare Pages

    Git-driven deploys, free tier, no plugin attack surface. Replaced a WordPress install (Avada + Slider Revolution) that was breached.

  • Pagefind

    WASM-powered static search that runs entirely client-side. No search server, no analytics, no third-party tracking.

  • Vitest + Playwright

    Unit, accessibility, and visual regression tests. Runs locally and on every push. Recent fixes are pinned by regression tests so they cannot quietly come back.

  • Git + GitHub (private repo)

    Source control. Every change is a pull request. There is no production CMS to compromise — the build artefact is plain static files.

  • Plain CSS with custom properties

    No Tailwind, no CSS-in-JS. Tokens live in one file (src/styles/tokens.css) and the rest is hand-written. Slower to scaffold, easier to read in three years.

Inspired by the /uses/ convention. Research stack, communication tools, and hardware will be added as the list stabilises. Want to flag a better tool for something here? The contact page reaches me directly.