Tushar Nikam — champ96k.com

Personal corner of the internet: projects, open-source work, writing, values, career and a bit about a software engineer who happens to live in India.

Built with Astro (static site, near-zero client JS), TypeScript, MDX and hand-written CSS. No Tailwind, no CMS, no database, no build-time network calls (GitHub data is synced ahead of time into JSON, see below).

Quick start

npm install
npm run dev        # local dev server (http://localhost:4321)
npm run build      # static build to dist/
npm run preview    # preview the built site
npm run check      # astro check (types + content schemas)
npm run test:pages # DOM checks against a running preview (port 4321)
npm run sync:github # pull latest GitHub repos/contributions into src/data/github/*.json

Known quirk: if your shell exports an invalid GITHUB_TOKEN, sync fails. Run it as env -u GITHUB_TOKEN npm run sync:github. It works fine without a token on public data (rate-limited to ~60 requests/hour).

Multiple dev/preview servers: astro dev refuses to start if another is running. Stop strays with npx astro dev stop / npx astro preview stop, or run on another port (npm run dev -- --port 4322).

How the site is organized

Everything user-editable lives in YAML files under src/data/ (each mapped to a content schema in src/content.config.ts). Components never hardcode content, so you edit data without touching code. Date-sorted lists sort newest → oldest automatically.

Page	Data file	What each entry looks like
Home hero, About intro	src/data/profile.yaml	name, headline, tagline (split into paragraphs by blank lines), about, email, image
Home "Find me", footer	src/data/social.yaml	one block per platform (label, handle, url)
Projects (list + detail)	src/data/projects.yaml	see Adding/updating a project
Open Source	src/data/open-source.yaml	curated list + synced GitHub data (see Open source)
Writing	.md/.mdx in src/content/writing/	see Writing
About career	src/data/career.yaml	company, role, dates, description, technologies, image
About education	src/data/education.yaml	institution, degree, field, dates, description, image
About volunteering	src/data/volunteering.yaml	org, role, dates, description, link, image
Values	src/data/values.yaml	order, title, description

All career/education/volunteering entries accept an optional image: (path like /logos/foo.png or a URL) shown as the timeline logo. Start from /logo-placeholder.svg if you don't have a real logo yet.

---

Projects

Projects live in src/data/projects.yaml as a list. Only id, title and date are required. Append a new entry anywhere — the site sorts by date newest first.

- id: my-project-slug
  title: My Project
  description: One line about what it is.
  date: 2026-08-15          # YYYY-MM-DD, usually the repo creation date
  type: Website             # badge: App / Website / Tool / Library / Experiment ...
  tags: [Web, Tool]
  status: Live              # Live / Active / Open Source ...
  url: https://example.com  # optional live link
  github: https://github.com/champ96k/my-project

Every entry with a unique id automatically gets a detail page at /projects/<id> (see src/pages/projects/[slug].astro). Fields that enrich the detail page:

  overview: Longer paragraph about the project.
  what_i_built:
    - Bullet about the part you built
    - Another bullet
  technologies: [Dart, Flutter, REST]
  image: /path/to/logo.png        # put the file in public/ first
  links:                          # store-links row (like PeakFit / Contest Hub)
    - label: App Store
      url: https://apps.apple.com/app/id000000000
    - label: Play Store
      url: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.champ96k.app

If a project has none of overview/what_i_built/technologies/links, the detail page shows "More details coming soon."

---

Open Source

The /open-source page has two parts.

1. my_projects — repos you own (curated + dynamic)

In src/data/open-source.yaml, list each repo you want to feature. The only required field is repository: owner/name — title, description, stars, tags, language and dates are pulled from your synced GitHub data at build time. Override any of them by adding the field:

my_projects:
  - repository: champ96k/quanta_db
    title: QuantaDB          # optional display override
    role: Author
    homepage: https://quantadb.netlify.app/   # optional live link
    description: Override description...      # optional
    tags: [Dart, Flutter]                     # optional; defaults to GitHub topics
    image: /logos/quanta-db.png               # optional logo

2. contributions — PRs to other people's repos

You usually don't write this by hand. The contributions: block in open-source.yaml is only a fallback for old PRs that the GitHub search no longer returns (the WHO ones are kept here). Everything is deduped by repo + PR number, synced data wins.

Sync pulls every PR you authored in repos you don't own, and the page shows only Open and Merged states. To refresh:

env -u GITHUB_TOKEN npm run sync:github   # see src/data/github/contributions.json

The deploy workflow (.github/workflows/deploy.yml) runs this automatically every day at 03:37 UTC, on every push to main, and on manual dispatch — and redeploys, so contributions keep themselves fresh once pushed.

---

Writing

Add a Markdown (or MDX) file under src/content/writing/, e.g. src/content/writing/my-post.md. Frontmatter:

---
title: My post title
description: A sentence that summarizes the post.
date: 2026-08-15
type: Technical                 # Technical / Notes / Opinion ...
tags: [Meta, Astro]
draft: false                    # optional; true hides it from lists
---

Your post body in Markdown.

Posts automatically appear on /writing, on the home "Recent writing" preview (latest 5), and in the RSS feed. Filenames become the URL slug.

---

About me, career, education, volunteering

• About intro + home tagline → src/data/profile.yaml. The tagline supports paragraph breaks: insert a blank line between blocks. The home hero also highlights Gojek and GoPay in yellow (do it by editing src/pages/index.astro + src/styles/global.css).
• Career timeline → src/data/career.yaml. Entries: company, role, employment, start/end (YYYY-MM or present), location, image, company_url, description, highlights, technologies. Newest first is automatic.
• Education → src/data/education.yaml: institution, degree, field, start, end, description, image.
• Volunteering → src/data/volunteering.yaml: org, role, start, end, description, link, image.
• Values → src/data/values.yaml. order controls display order; titles/descriptions are verbatim quotes, keep them exact.

Important: after editing any YAML, if a page keeps showing old content, the Astro content cache is stale. Clear it and rebuild:

rm -rf .astro node_modules/.astro dist && npm run build

---

Local helper script

scripts/site.mjs wraps the common workflows into one command so you don't have to remember the flags:

node scripts/site.mjs dev          # start dev server, stopping any stray one first
node scripts/site.mjs build        # clear stale cache, type-check, build
node scripts/site.mjs preview      # clear cache, build, serve dist, run DOM checks
node scripts/site.mjs sync         # GitHub sync (ignores a bad GITHUB_TOKEN)
node scripts/site.mjs verify       # rebuild + DOM checks against a fresh preview
node scripts/site.mjs help

Deployment & checks

GitHub Pages via actions/deploy-pages (.github/workflows/deploy.yml). Pushing to main builds and deploys. Scheduled runs keep GitHub data fresh.

• npm run check — type/content errors (no warnings expected; a handful of Zod deprecation hints are harmless).
• npm run test:pages — DOM assertions against a preview on port 4321 (scripts/dom-check.mjs).
• scripts/visual-check.mjs — smoke-tests core routes over HTTP.

Migrated from Flutter

This repo previously held a Flutter app (kept on the develop branch). The main branch now holds the Astro site; the old implementation was intentionally left out of the redesign.