Journey · 7 Oct 2026 · 5 min read

Why I Built a Portfolio Website Instead of Relying on a Resume

I share the honest reasons I swapped a traditional resume for a 3‑D animated portfolio site, how I built it with Claude Code and Supabase, and what I learned along the way.

how to create portfolio website – my personal reason

Last week I searched for “how to create portfolio website” and realized most of the guides were aimed at designers, not at a developer like me who wants to showcase code, AI experiments, and a few short videos. A plain resume feels old‑school, especially when I can demonstrate a live, interactive site that tells the same story in motion. In this post I explain why I chose to build a 3‑D animated portfolio website instead of relying on a traditional resume.

Resumes have been the standard for decades, but they compress everything into a single page of bullet points. That format hides the process behind a project, the little demos that actually run, and the visual style I care about. When a recruiter asks for a PDF I can send one, but when I’m in a technical interview I want the interviewers to see the code, the video walkthroughs, and the interactive UI without opening a separate zip file. A portfolio site lets me arrange those pieces the way I think about them, and it gives me a place to update everything instantly.

The hero section of my site uses my own photograph, which I ran through Flow AI to add subtle 3‑D rotation and depth. It feels like a small personal animation that catches the eye without being a distraction. The effect took a few minutes of tweaking, but the result is a friendly face that greets anyone who lands on the page. I also added a short tagline that explains I’m an AI‑powered app builder from Pundri, Kaithal, so the visitor gets context right away.

Below the hero I created three main sections: an “About Me” paragraph that talks about my background in Python, AI tools like Claude Code, Gemini and VS Code; a “Projects” gallery where each entry shows a thumbnail, a short video demo, and a link to the GitHub repo; and a “Contact” form that writes directly to my Supabase table. The layout is responsive, so it works on a phone as well as on a laptop, which matters because many interviewers view my site on a small screen during a video call.

I wrote most of the front‑end code with Claude Code, which helped me generate boilerplate components and debug CSS quirks faster than typing everything by hand. For the back‑end I set up a Supabase project and added an admin panel that I can reach from a hidden URL. The panel lets me add new blog posts, upload project screenshots, and edit text without touching the codebase again. This self‑service approach saved me from a long cycle of redeploys every time I wanted to showcase a new experiment.

One of the features I’m most proud of is the blog‑post editor. It works the same way as the post‑automation pipeline I described in my earlier article about generating three posts a week with free AI tools. If you’re curious about that workflow, check out how I automated my blog: 3 posts a week with free AI for the full details. The editor uses Supabase’s real‑time API, so when I save a draft the changes appear instantly on the public site.

Building the site also reminded me of the early days when I first learned to code with nothing but a laptop in Pundri. That story lives in another post, Learning to code with just a laptop, where I talk about how curiosity and late‑night debugging got me started. The same perseverance helped me push through the moments when Claude Code produced syntax that didn’t compile or when Supabase rate limits forced me to batch updates.

• ✅ Immediate visual impact – interviewers see a live demo instead of a static PDF.
• ✅ Centralised updates – a single admin panel refreshes the résumé, projects, and blog.
• ✅ SEO advantage – search engines can index the site and bring me organic traffic.
• ⚠️ Ongoing maintenance – I need to keep dependencies up‑to‑date and watch for broken links.
• ⚠️ Performance tuning – 3‑D animations add load time, so I must optimise assets.

During interviews the portfolio site becomes a conversation starter. Instead of saying “I built an AI chatbot”, I can click the project card, play the demo video, and walk the interviewer through the code in real time. It also shows that I’m comfortable with modern deployment pipelines, because the site lives on Vercel and pulls data from Supabase without any manual server management.

The downside is that a website needs regular attention. Every time I add a new library I have to test that the build still works, and the animated hero can cause issues on older browsers. I also spend a few hours each month reviewing analytics to see which sections attract the most clicks, so I can decide where to improve content.

Looking ahead, I plan to add a light‑dark theme toggle, integrate a simple AI chat widget that can answer quick questions about my projects, and write a short guide on how I used Claude Code to scaffold the entire site. Those upgrades will keep the portfolio fresh and give visitors a reason to return.

A portfolio isn’t just a showcase; it’s a living document of what you’re learning right now.

In short, the portfolio website replaced the old‑school resume because it lets me present my work dynamically, update it instantly, and make a stronger impression in technical interviews. If you want to see the site in action, take a look at the live version on my projects.