WaisFox

Overview

WaisFox is where I keep notes as I learn: educational write-ups, poetry, a journal, short thoughts, and a Tagalog corner. The premise is in the tagline, "Learn slowly. Think wais." It runs live at waisfox.com.

The Problem

Off-the-shelf blogging tools assume every entry is the same kind of thing. One chronological feed, one category per post, and a publishing model built for dated articles. Notes, poems, and journal entries are not the same kind of thing, and a poem does not belong in the same list as a health explainer.

I wanted the opposite: a structure where topics hold categories, tags cut across both, and the front door shows the shape of the writing instead of a single stream.

What I Built

• The reading side: a topic and category tree, tag pages, full-text search, and an RSS feed. Reader preferences (including the light and dark palette) are remembered between visits.
• The author side: an authenticated workspace for drafts and publishing, image uploads, and session management, including revoking sessions signed in elsewhere.
• The API: a JSON API for posts, topics, categories, tags, search, and newsletter signups, so the front end stays a thin rendering layer over the content.
• The design: Bricolage Grotesque for headings, Newsreader for long-form text, and IBM Plex Mono for labels, with theme selection applied before first paint so the page never flashes the wrong palette.

Status

The platform is live and publishing, starting with the Poetry Corner. Content builds up as I write.

Stack

React and Vite on the front end, a JSON API behind it, deployed on Vercel. The reading experience is deliberately light: no client-side app shell between the reader and the text.

Takeaway

The taxonomy turned out to be the real work. A note, a poem, and a journal entry want different lengths, different metadata, and different reading surfaces, and the platform only feels coherent because those differences are modeled rather than flattened into a generic post.