A few weeks ago, my blog looked like it hadn’t been touched since 2015. Honestly, it hadn’t. It was running a theme called “Decode,” which had served me well through years of Adobe AEM consulting work — but as I’ve shifted my focus toward AI in 2025 and beyond, the old design felt like wearing a suit from a decade ago. It fit, technically. But it wasn’t me anymore.
So I decided to do something I’d been putting off: redesign the whole thing. And this time, I brought an AI along for the ride.
Starting with a Conversation, Not a Brief
Instead of opening Figma or hunting for a new WordPress theme, I started with a conversation. I described what I wanted — something dark and sophisticated, with a sense of forward momentum. Something that said “I’ve spent 15 years in enterprise tech and I’m now exploring what AI can actually do.” Within minutes, I had a design direction: deep navy backgrounds, gold accents, Playfair Display serif headlines paired with DM Sans for body text.
What surprised me was how quickly the back-and-forth narrowed things down. I didn’t need to browse 50 theme demos or fill out a creative brief. I just described the feeling I was after, and the AI translated that into concrete design decisions — hex codes, font pairings, layout philosophy.
From Design to Working Code
The next step was building an actual WordPress theme. I’m not a developer by trade — my background is in digital transformation and AEM architecture — so writing PHP templates and CSS from scratch wasn’t something I was going to do alone. The AI generated every file: functions.php, header.php, index.php, custom template parts, the works.
We went through several rounds of iteration. The nav was showing a duplicate LinkedIn link. The timeline section was missing three of four items. The profile photo wasn’t loading. Each bug was flagged, diagnosed, and fixed in the same conversation — no Stack Overflow, no freelancer, no waiting.
By the end of the session, I had a complete custom theme packaged as a zip file, ready to upload directly to WordPress.
What the Theme Actually Does
The new theme, which I’m calling “Armaghan AI,” does a few things I’m genuinely proud of. It hides all my pre-2025 posts from the frontend — those AEM and enterprise CMS posts were good at the time, but they’re not what this blog is about anymore. It features a hero section with a profile card pulled from my real headshot. It has a journey timeline that traces my path from AEM consultant to AI explorer. And it renders posts in a clean featured-plus-grid layout that actually looks good on mobile.
None of this took weeks. It took one focused session.
What I Learned
The biggest shift for me wasn’t technical — it was psychological. I’ve spent years managing large enterprise implementations where every design decision went through committees and change management processes. The idea that I could just describe something and have it built, immediately, in a single conversation, still feels a little unreal.
AI didn’t replace the judgment calls. I still had to decide what the blog was for, who it was for, and what story it should tell. But it collapsed the distance between idea and execution in a way I hadn’t experienced before.
That’s the thing I keep coming back to as I explore AI tools in 2026: it’s not about automation replacing work. It’s about dramatically shortening the loop between intention and result. And for someone who’s spent a career helping large organizations move faster, that feels like the most important capability shift I’ve seen.
More posts to come as I keep exploring. The blog is live, the theme is working, and the journey is just getting started.