WORKSHOP · TOOLS & EXPERIMENTS

The Cockpit

The Cockpit is a private, password-protected web application I built to publish status updates to this site from anywhere — a phone, a tablet, a borrowed computer. It lives on PythonAnywhere and handles everything from writing the update to pushing it live.

It has since grown into something larger. It is now the entry point to a small private suite of tools: a task kneeboard, a scratch pad, and a project knowledge base. None of it is publicly accessible. This page is just the technical manual.

Why It Exists

Status updates on this site are Markdown files. Each one lives in a _status_updates/ collection in the Jekyll repository. To publish one, you need to create a file with the right front matter, commit it, and push it to GitHub — at which point GitHub Pages rebuilds the site and the update goes live.

That’s a fine workflow at a desk. It is not a fine workflow on a phone.

The Cockpit solves that. It is a form on the web that does all of the above automatically. Type a status, optionally attach a photo, hit transmit. Done.

How It’s Built

Backend: Python, using the Flask framework. Hosted on PythonAnywhere, which provides a persistent environment where the Jekyll repository lives as a local clone.

Authentication: Cookie-based. A password form sets an auth_token cookie on success. Every route checks for it. Simple and sufficient for a personal tool.

The publishing flow:

When a status update is submitted the app does the following in sequence:

  • Generates a filename from the current timestamp in Eastern time — something like 2026-04-07-214532.markdown
  • Builds the Jekyll front matter: date, layout, author, source, and any hashtag-detected categories like #movie or #coffee
  • If an image was attached, saves it to the assets directory, runs it through Pillow to resize and optimize it, and appends the image reference as Markdown
  • Writes the complete Markdown file to the _status_updates/ directory
  • Runs git pull --rebase, git add, git commit, and git push — in that order
  • If the update is text-only (no image), also posts to omg.lol via their API, with the leading emoji parsed out into a separate field their API expects

Image optimization: Uploaded images are resized to a maximum width of 1200px, converted to JPEG if needed, and saved at 85% quality. Small enough for the web, good enough to look right.

The omg.lol mirror: Status updates without images are automatically mirrored to my omg.lol status page. The app checks if the first character of the text is an emoji — if it is, that emoji gets extracted into a dedicated field their API uses for display, and the rest of the text becomes the content.

The Comms

There is a comms.txt file in the repository that the Cockpit reads on every page load. It contains messages that appear in the interface as a kind of ambient context — things like time-of-day greetings, day-of-week notes, or just things I wrote to myself.

Each line is either a plain message or a pipe-delimited message with tags that determine when it appears. A line like PM|FRIDAY|Hey, it's almost the weekend only shows up on Friday afternoons. A plain line shows up any time.

The app builds a weighted list of valid messages based on the current time — more specific matches appear more often — and picks one at random to display. It is an easter egg for an audience of one.

Below Deck

Below Deck is a private task kneeboard accessible from the Cockpit. It is intentionally minimal — no projects, no priorities, no due dates. Just a quick place to capture what needs doing.

Tasks have optional tags (work, home, errand, personal) and support drag-to-reorder. Completed tasks surface in a Today’s Wins section and auto-clear at 4am. The kneeboard is a kneeboard. It does not try to be anything else.

Tasks that grow into something larger can be promoted to the Command Deck with one tap.

Scratch Pad

A private cross-device notepad that lives inside the Cockpit. Notes sync to the server automatically and fall back to localStorage if the network is unavailable. Accessible from the Cockpit and from anywhere in the Command Deck via a keyboard shortcut.

The Command Deck

The Command Deck is a private project knowledge base that lives inside the same application as the Cockpit. It is where tasks that outgrow the kneeboard go — projects with notes, checklists, file attachments, and context.

Each project is its own page. Notes are freeform. Checklists track what’s in progress. Files are stored on a CDN. Projects can be marked private and hidden behind a PIN.

The Command Deck has its own AI companion named Huyang — named after the ancient archivist droid from Ahsoka. When you’re on a project page, Huyang has read everything in it and can answer questions about it precisely. He is not Ani. He does not have a personality agenda. He reads what is in front of him and answers carefully.

The Stack

  • Python — core language
  • Flask — web framework
  • Pillow — image processing
  • subprocess — git operations
  • SQLite — Below Deck and Command Deck data
  • PythonAnywhere — hosting
  • omg.lol API — status mirroring
  • Anthropic Claude API — Huyang
  • Bunny.net — file storage for Command Deck
  • Jekyll — the site that receives the published files

What It Is Not

The Cockpit is not a CMS. It does not have an edit history, a delete function, or a draft mode beyond a local buffer. It publishes and that is all. Every status update is permanent and public the moment it is transmitted.

That is a feature, not a limitation. It encourages writing things worth saying.

The Cockpit is one part of a three-way publishing pipeline. Status updates can also be posted via a bash script run locally from the command line. Both methods end up in the same place: a Markdown file in the Jekyll collection, committed and pushed, live on the site.