Fusite is the custom-built static site generator that powers this website. Instead of managing content in markdown files or wrestling with a traditional CMS, I edit everything in Notion and let the build system transform it into the fast, static HTML you're reading right now.

It's kind of like using a Ferrari to deliver pizza. Unnecessary? Maybe. Does it work surprisingly well? That, it does.

The Core Idea

Most static site generators want you to write markdown files. Git commit. Push. Rebuild. Repeat. It works, but editing markdown in a code editor gets old fast when you just want to fix a typo or add a project.

So I took a different approach:

The result? I edit content in Notion's beautiful interface (including from my phone), run a build, and boom—updated website.

Why This Is Mildly Interesting

Notion as a Database

Traditional databases are great for structured data. Notion databases are great for humans editing structured data. You get:

The catch? Notion's API has rate limits (3 requests/second), so you can't build a real-time app. But for a personal website that rebuilds every few hours? Perfect fit.

Custom-Built Static Generator

I could've used Hugo or Jekyll or Gatsby. But where's the fun in that?

Building a custom generator let me:

The codebase is surprisingly clean—about 3,000 lines of TypeScript split between:

A cute little API

The frontend itself does not use an API to get content dynamically (content is extracted from Notion during build time).

There is a little API that uses the same Projects DB in Notion to return just the project’s metadata used in my Fuscapp Hub (simple home page for the fuscapp.fuscripts.com subdomain where all my web apps live). This way the project info both in fuscripts.com and fuscapp.fuscripts.com is the same and both applications represent my projects consistently with no extra work.

The Stack

For the nerds:

For everyone else:

It's fast, type-safe, and doesn't require me to manage servers.

The Architecture in 30 Seconds

Notion Databases
    ↓
fusite-commons (shared library)
    ↓
  ↙ ↘
Web     API
 ↓       ↓
 S3    Lambda
 ↓
CloudFront
   ↓
Your Browser

The web build fetches all content from Notion, renders it to static HTML with Handlebars templates, styles it with Tailwind, and uploads to S3. The API provides read-only access to project metadata for other applications (like my project hub).

Results

1. Zero Client-Side JavaScript (for content)

Every page is pre-rendered HTML. No React hydration, no client-side routing, no JavaScript bundle to download. The only JS is analytics (PostHog, optional).

This makes the site:

The "Why Did You Build This?" Question

Yeah yeah, there are some services like Super.so that do exactly that.

I started using Super initially but lost interest fast. The tool works, but I saw myself spending a lot of time to understand its features (didn’t love the docs) and I found the templates a bit limited and nothing that delivered the exact vision I had in mind for the site.

At that time, vibe coding wasn’t as popular yet so building the website myself seemed like a lot more effort. After I got more used with coding with AI, this changed and suddenly it was worth investing a few hours to make the build process myself.

In summary:

Want to Go Deeper?

If you're curious about the technical implementation, I've written detailed architecture documents for the frontend and the API. Check them out through the links on this page.