The New johnmaconline.com

If you’re reading this on johnmaconliine.com, you might notice that it looks very different from what it did a few days ago.

The redo is 100% Codex-developed. Not the content, of course, but the website itself.

I wrote zero lines of code. However, I went round and round with first GPT-5.5 and then Terra and Sol to make it what you see. My workflow was:

1. Develop a documented plan — I did that by describing to Codex what my goals were in free-form text.
2. As per the plan, developed a requirements document — I did that by listing out all of my known requirements and having Codex walk me through a Q&A to develop a fuller set.
3. Fed the plan and requirements doc into Codex and asked it to develop a local prototype and test it. It built everything from the ground up and tested it (as best it knew how).
4. Iterated on that local prototype with Codex for a couple weeks by giving it feedback such as “I don’t like the way the sidebar is ordered. Change it to…” and “Look at this screenshot (pasted screenshot). The title is in the wrong spot and the wrong size. Fix it.” and “Let’s try a different color scheme.”
5. Once it looked OK, I had Codex publish it to v2.johnmaconline.com so I could test both the publishing automation to my host (I currently use Bluehost) and all the functionality, such as email subscription, search, stats, etc.
6. Iterated for a couple more weeks with Codex to get all of the functionality correct.
7. The last step before publishing live was to have Codex develop automation that could “undo” the publishing of the new site. I wanted a failsafe so that if I published and it fell on its face, I could immediately restore the “v1” version.
8. When I was satisfied it all worked, I told Codex to go ahead and publish.

That’s the new software development paradigm with AI.

As developers, we’re no longer writing code. We’re guiding and directing the agent to do it. I’m in charge of requirements, how it’s architected and implemented, and ensuring it meets the requirements. It’s in charge of syntax.

This isn’t “vibecoding.” This is pro software development.

I’m a pro, and my AI agent is a pro.

Welcome to the new johnmaconline.