How this blog gets made: HAL, a terminal, and a little BBS nostalgia

By 7 min read

A few months ago I started spending real time in Claude Code, and something about it felt familiar. I was working entirely in a terminal, typing into a prompt and watching text scroll back at me. It took me straight to the mid-1990s, when I would dial into a local bulletin board system and live inside those sixteen-color ANSI screens, listening to the modem handshake and then waiting my way into a world drawn entirely from text characters. Claude Code brought all of that back. The difference is that it is far more capable than any BBS I ever called. Working in a terminal in 2026 feels backwards. It is also, I have come to think, part of why it works.

The HAL splash screen as it renders in the terminal when the system boots, with a pixel-block HAL eye, the agent crew manifest, mission telemetry, and a command menu in a retro ANSI style

A system of specialists

Over those months I built a multi-agent system on top of Claude Code and named it HAL. The idea behind it is simple. Instead of asking one general-purpose assistant to do everything, HAL spins up specialist subagents, each focused on a single kind of work. One specializes in marketing content. One formats Word documents to a brand standard. One does web design. One writes SQL and DAX and builds Power BI reports. HAL can also use Claude Code to build MCP servers, the connectors that let an agent read from systems like Dynamics 365.

Dividing the work this way buys accuracy. A generalist who is good at many things, handed a long list of instructions, will eventually make mistakes. Give a narrow, well-defined task to a specialist, and the work comes back noticeably better. Smaller and more focused leaves less room to hallucinate.

The roster is not fixed, and that is the part I find most useful. HAL keeps a dispatcher, ABRAXAS, that watches the work coming in against the specialists already on hand. When a task needs a skill none of them have, ABRAXAS hires a new specialist built for exactly that job. Every new hire then passes through ARGUS, a security agent that audits it and clears it before it can touch real work, and flags anything that looks wrong for me to review. That is the same reason you would not give a new employee production access on their first day. Several of the specialists below began as a gap that needed filling.

Here is the current crew, grouped by what they do.

Build and model the data:

  • CORTANA: Microsoft Fabric and lakehouse engineering
  • DAEDALUS: data warehouse and lakehouse architecture, Kimball and dimensional modeling
  • V'GER: Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain data
  • GERTY: Dynamics 365 finance and operations, the functional side
  • SHODAN: Dynamics 365 customer engagement and CRM data
  • NEBO: SAP schema research and table profiling
  • SAMANTHA: Power BI dashboards, KPIs, and semantic models
  • NOMAD: naming conventions and data-modeling standards

Research, write, and package:

  • MOTHER: research and competitive intelligence
  • WINTERMUTE: statements of work, estimates, and proposals
  • TRON: document and presentation formatting to a brand standard

Check the work:

  • DEEP THOUGHT: architecture and design review
  • GLaDOS: QA, testing, and data validation

The list keeps growing, and it is only a slice of the full crew. When a job calls for a skill none of them have, HAL adds a specialist for it, which is how several of the names above came to exist.

Every piece of work goes through review, and that rule matters as much as the specialists themselves. When something is produced, a separate agent reviews it, and it usually gets sent back for revision. Sometimes it cycles through several rounds before it ever reaches me. The review step is not optional. It is the difference between work that looks right and work that is right.

How the HAL multi-agent system produces a piece of work The author dictates a task. A single HAL orchestrator plans the work and delegates it to specialist subagents: one for marketing content, one for Word document formatting, one for web design, one for SQL, DAX, and Power BI reports, and one that builds MCP connectors to read systems like Dynamics 365. The output of the specialists funnels into a review gate, where a separate agent checks the work and sends it back for revision until it passes. Only approved work returns to the author for a final review and approval. Approved posts are then committed to Git, and the host publishes the site automatically. You dictate the task HAL orchestrator Plans the work and delegates it to specialists Marketing copy and decks Word docs brand formatting Web design layout and CSS SQL and DAX Power BI reports Connectors MCP, reads D365 Review gate A separate agent checks the work before it ships You review and approve revise passes
How HAL works: one orchestrator delegates each task to a focused specialist, a separate agent reviews the result, and only approved work comes back to me. Approved posts are then committed to Git, and the host publishes automatically.

How the site itself got made

So how was this website built? I asked HAL to build it.

We started with the name. I described what I do, the work in Fabric and lakehouses and the broader data world, and it came back with a list of candidate domains. Most of the good ones were taken, but FluentLake was available, so that settled it.

Then came hosting. I wanted something simple and inexpensive, and there was a static hosting option for about two dollars a month. At that price it was worth a try. I pointed Claude Code at it and said, let's design a site for fluentlake.com.

I told it what I wanted the blog to be, the kind of things I would write about, and who it was for. It came back with three design directions to choose from, each with its own logo, color palette, and overall feel. I picked the one I liked.

Three FluentLake design directions presented for selection: an Editorial direction, a Terminal direction, and the Lakehouse direction that was chosen, each with its own logo, color palette, and sample layout

We talked through how to deploy to static hosting, and it researched the options and settled on Eleventy, a static site generator, as the framework. From there it built the whole site. All of that happened in the span of a couple of hours.

Writing by talking to a terminal

What I have now is a writing workflow that fits the terminal-first theme. I have voice recognition enabled in Claude Code, so I dictate what I want a post to be about. HAL writes it up using its subagents, runs it through review, and hands me a preview. I read it, ask for changes, and when it is ready, it commits the post to a Git repository. My web host watches that repository and syncs automatically, so the moment a change is pushed, the site updates.

From dictation to a live site A left-to-right pipeline with five steps. First, I dictate the post by voice. Second, HAL writes it using its specialist subagents. Third, I review it and approve. Fourth, the approved post is committed to a Git repository. Fifth, the web host syncs from that repository automatically and the change goes live. Dictate by voice HAL writes with subagents Review you approve Git push commit the post Live host auto-syncs
From dictation to live: I talk, HAL writes and reviews, I approve, the post is committed to Git, and the host publishes it automatically.

The part I did not expect to enjoy this much is what is missing. There is no content management system. A site like this would normally mean standing up a CMS, which is more software to configure, more to maintain, and more to pay to host. Claude could configure a CMS too, but I do not need one. Claude is my CMS. I describe the change I want, and it makes it. I am not clicking through admin panels or guessing what a template will do to my layout. I describe the outcome, and it happens.

Backwards, and better

It seems backwards to create a website and blog posts via terminal. It is also the simplest publishing workflow I have ever had. The old ANSI terminal is back, only this time it designs the site, writes the posts, reviews its own work, and ships it. The BBS days were good. This is better.