Two features that had been sitting on the README’s “Future plans” list for a while and shipped well together: a /uses page describing my day-to-day setup, and a vim-style chord shortcut system for jumping between routes. They both touch nav and routing, so it made sense to bundle them into one branch.

Feature 1: `/uses`

The browser side is unremarkable in the best way — the page reuses the existing Page layout and TerminalFrame component, drops in a ~/uses heading, and renders one frame per category with a dl.uses-grid (grid-template-columns: max-content 1fr, the same pattern the homepage whoami block uses). Categories cover system, shell & editor, languages, tools, fonts, and hardware. There is no markdown or content collection behind it: /uses is a list of typed key/value pairs, not prose, so it lives in src/data/uses.ts next to contact.ts and resume.ts.

export interface UsesItem { key: string; value: string; }
export interface UsesCategory { heading: string; items: UsesItem[]; }
export interface Uses { categories: UsesCategory[]; }
export const USES: Uses = { categories: [ /* ... */ ] };

Both the browser route and the curl renderer import USES from this module, so the two views can never drift.

The fun part is the curl side. renderUses() in src/curl/render.ts lays the SLK logo on the left and the info on the right, neofetch-style:

┌── ~/uses ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                                                                             │
│ ▄▀▀▀▀ █     █  ▄▀  ── system ──                                             │
│ ▀▄▄▄  █     █▄▀    os: Gentoo Desktop 23.0                                  │
│     █ █     █▀▄    kernel: 7.0.1 gentoo-kernel                              │
│ ▀▄▄▄▀ █▄▄▄▄ █  ▀▄  wm: sway                                                 │
│ ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄  terminal: kitty                                          │
│ ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄                                                           │
│                                                                             │
│                    ── shell & editor ──                                     │
│                    shell: bash                                              │
│                    editor: neovim                                           │
│                    ...                                                      │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Composition is a straight zip: split the rendered logo on \n, walk the category list pushing dim ── heading ── separators and bold(cyan(key)): bodyWarm(value) rows, then pair logo lines with info lines row-by-row. When the info column outruns the logo (it always does), the remaining rows get a left pad of spaces equal to the logo’s visible width. Visible width is measured with visibleWidth() (the same ANSI-aware helper box() uses), so escape sequences never throw the columns off.

Routing-wise the middleware gets one new branch — pathname === '/uses' || pathname === '/uses/' for terminal clients goes through renderUses(USES) and textResponse(...). The nav module gets a new ~/uses entry between ~/blog and ~/contact, which automatically lights up in both the browser header and the curl page header because both read from the same NAV_LINKS tuple.

Feature 2: vim-style chord shortcuts

The bindings are the obvious set:

chord	action
`g h`	go home
`g p`	go to projects
`g b`	go to blog
`g u`	go to uses
`g c`	go to contact
`?`	toggle help overlay
`Esc`	close help overlay

The implementation splits cleanly into a pure resolver and a DOM island.

src/lib/shortcuts.ts exports resolveChord(state, key, now, timeoutMs) — no DOM, no globals, no side effects. State is { leader: 'g' | null; leaderAt: number }. The function returns the next state and an action variant: navigate, toggle-help, close-help, or none. ? and Escape always take precedence and clear any pending leader. A g leader older than 1500 ms is treated as expired before the new key is processed, so an idle hand on g doesn’t trap you in chord mode forever. Because the whole thing is pure, the test file just feeds it a sequence of key events and asserts on what comes out — no JSDOM needed.

src/islands/keyboard-shortcuts.ts is the side-effect layer. It attaches one keydown listener on document at module load. The document survives Astro view transitions, so re-binding on every astro:page-load would leak handlers, hence the once-only attach. The handler runs three guards before consulting the resolver:

event.isComposing — bail during IME composition,
any of ctrlKey/metaKey/altKey — let the browser have its hotkeys,
event.target is INPUT/TEXTAREA/SELECT or isContentEditable — don’t hijack typing.

If the resolver returns navigate, the island calls navigate(href) from astro:transitions/client so the existing ClientRouter handles the transition (and the persisted #ascii-bg doesn’t reset). For toggle-help it lazily builds an overlay the first time it’s asked, then flips display: none/flex thereafter.

The overlay is built imperatively in the island rather than as its own .astro component, mirroring how palette-toggle.ts keeps its UI self-contained. It’s a centered card with role="dialog" and aria-modal="true", rendered against a dimmed backdrop, and listing each chord with <kbd> elements styled inline with the existing palette variables (--bg-surface, --fg, --fg-muted, --accent, --border). It closes on Esc, on backdrop click, and on a small × button in the corner; closing returns focus to whatever was focused when the overlay opened.

Discoverability is one dim line in the page footer: press ? for keyboard shortcuts. Enough to find it; not loud enough to nag.

Wrap-up

Two more items off the future-plans list. The next obvious ones are a man lsalik page and OG image generation per post, but those are bigger swings — for now I’m happy with the small QoL pile growing one feature at a time.

Feature 1: /uses

Feature 2: vim-style chord shortcuts

Wrap-up

Feature 1: `/uses`