The home for
Sarthak's work.|

Welcome to my corner of the web where I write about design, code, startups, growth, AI, and just about anything that interests me.

Back in 2018, I began my journey as a self-taught product designer and developer. Over the last 8 years I've built a portfolio of bootstrapped ventures, focusing on design, AI and growth. Learn more about me

Reach out

Ventures.

Winitiate

2025

Codemap

2025

Learnway

2024

Drool

2023

Altpack

2022

Weaveu

2021

Why I Didn't Use Google Programmable Search

Google's search API sounds perfect for static sites. It isn't. Here's why the pricing model and indexing delays make it impractical for most blogs.

Pixel art of a ship with red sails floating on a sea under clouds.

January 14, 2026 • astro, search, meilisearch, docker, traefik, self-hosting, typescript

Meilisearch is the Best Search You'll Never Need

Self-hosting Meilisearch with Docker, Traefik, and Astro - complete with API key management, content indexing, and rate limiting.

Pixel art of a glowing open book on a rocky ledge overlooking a galaxy.

January 13, 2026 • astro, search, pagefind, performance, typescript

Why I Switched from Orama to Pagefind

Why I use Pagefind: A deep dive into chunked indexing, bandwidth scaling, and setting up a production-grade search for Astro.

Pixel art of a vintage computer with a glowing green screen surrounded by lush plants.

January 12, 2026 • astro, search, orama, preact, typescript, ui-design

The Right Way to Add Orama Search to Astro

Stop using the Orama Astro plugin. Here is how to build a type-safe, metadata-rich search engine that actually works in Dev Mode.

Pixel art of a woman sweeping a sunlit room filled with plants and flowers.

January 11, 2026 • performance, preact, astro, optimization, typescript, canvas

Honey, I Shrunk my Frontend Bundle Size!

How I replaced Lottie with Canvas sprites, migrated to Preact, and removed heavy dependencies to cut over 300KB from my bundle.

Pixel art of a person writing with a quill by candlelight in a room.

January 10, 2026 • astro, accessibility, ai, automation, typescript, gemini, openrouter

Automating Accessibility: Generating Alt Text with AI

How I automated accessibility across my portfolio by building a build-time pipeline that uses Gemini Flash to generate accurate alt text for hundreds of images.

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The home for Sarthak's work.|