ryanbaumann · Nov 2, 2026 · Nov 2, 2026
diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -4,8 +4,9 @@ All notable changes to this project will be documented in this file.
 
 ## [Unreleased]
 
-- **Writing: *Why We Decide Beats What We Decide* (`portfolio/content/writing/why-we-make-decisions.md`, `portfolio/build.mjs`, `scripts/lib/content-rules.mjs`, `scripts/writer_app.mjs`, `scripts/social-cards.mjs`, `portfolio/static/social/why-we-make-decisions.jpg`)**:
-  - Published the Personal Field Note *Why We Decide Beats What We Decide* (`draft: false`, `noindex: false`, `type: Personal`, `tags: ["personal", "ai", "field notes"]`) on judgment fatigue in the AI era and using explicit values as a decision filter.
+- **Writing: *Why We Decide Beats What We Decide* (`portfolio/content/writing/why-we-make-decisions.md`, `portfolio/build.mjs`, `scripts/artifact-cards.mjs`, `portfolio/static/img/writing/why-we-make-decisions.svg`, `scripts/lib/content-rules.mjs`, `scripts/writer_app.mjs`, `scripts/social-cards.mjs`, `portfolio/static/social/why-we-make-decisions.jpg`)**:
+  - Published the Personal Field Note *Why We Decide Beats What We Decide* (`draft: false`, `noindex: false`, `type: Personal`, `order: 1`, `tags: ["personal", "ai", "field notes"]`) as the featured post on the homepage (`/`) and top entry on `/writing/`, with a basic typographic SVG thumbnail (`/img/writing/why-we-make-decisions.svg`) on the homepage and blog index while keeping the article detail page clean prose without an inline hero banner.
+  - Updated `featuredNote()` in `portfolio/build.mjs` to prefer `meta.image` over `meta.socialImage` so the homepage featured card displays the clean SVG thumbnail rather than the Open Graph social preview raster card.
   - Added `'personal'` to `DOMAIN_TAGS` and exempted `type: Personal` writing entries from mandatory header/inline infographics in `scripts/lib/content-rules.mjs`, while surfacing `meta.type` in the article eyebrow and metadata on `portfolio/build.mjs` and `scripts/writer_app.mjs`, and falling back to `meta.socialImage` in list rows when `meta.image` is omitted.
   - Added a 1200x627 portrait social preview card (`why-we-make-decisions.jpg`) and updated `scripts/writer_app.mjs` to render `meta.image` when present and serve static assets from `portfolio/static/`.
   - Updated `scripts/social-cards.mjs` to fall back to `channel: 'chrome'` when Playwright's bundled headless shell binary revision is not present in the local cache.

diff --git a/LEARNINGS.md b/LEARNINGS.md
@@ -10,7 +10,7 @@ Learning: `validateContent()` in `portfolio/build.mjs` validates internal links
 
 Evidence: `npm --prefix portfolio test` failed at `node build.mjs` with `writing/why-we-make-decisions: broken internal link /writing/ai-saves-the-hour/` until the link was pointed to a published essay (`/writing/can-i-build-an-ai-agent-that-doesnt-write-slop/`), and `scripts/writer_app.mjs` returned `404 Not Found` on `/img/writing/why-we-make-decisions-header.svg` until `portfolio/static/` resolution was added.
 
-Use next time: Only link to published routes (`draft: false`) inside `portfolio/content/**`, even when authoring a draft post, and run `npm --prefix portfolio test` (which runs both unit tests and `node build.mjs`) in addition to `build:writer`.
+Use next time: Only link to published routes (`draft: false`) inside `portfolio/content/**`, even when authoring a draft post, and run `npm --prefix portfolio test` (which runs both unit tests and `node build.mjs`) in addition to `build:writer`. When promoting a new Field Note to the Featured slot on `/`, set `order: 1` (and increment existing `order` values in `portfolio/content/writing/*.md`), because `buildHome()` sorts `pinnedWriting` by `a.meta.order ?? Infinity` before date.
 
 ## 2026-10-31 - `jsdom@30` and `undici@8` require Node 22+ (`zlib.createZstdDecompress`) and `build-and-smoke` must gate on `package-checks`
 

diff --git a/portfolio/build.mjs b/portfolio/build.mjs
@@ -915,12 +915,12 @@ function featuredNote(entry) {
   const { meta } = entry;
   const url = entryUrl('writing', entry);
   const external = Boolean(meta.external);
-  const image = meta.socialImage || meta.image;
+  const image = meta.image || meta.socialImage;
   const imagePath = image ? join(STATIC_DIR, image.replace(/^\//, '')) : '';
   const { width, height } = image && existsSync(imagePath) ? getImageDimensions(imagePath) : { width: 1200, height: 627 };
   const longDate = formatLongDate(meta.date);
   const thumb = image
-    ? `<img class="featured-note-thumb" src="${rebase(image)}" alt="${escapeHtml(meta.shareImageAlt || meta.imageAlt || meta.title)}" loading="lazy" width="${width}" height="${height}" />`
+    ? `<img class="featured-note-thumb" src="${rebase(image)}" alt="${escapeHtml(meta.imageAlt || meta.shareImageAlt || meta.title)}" loading="lazy" width="${width}" height="${height}" />`
     : '';
   return `<a class="featured-note" href="${url}" data-analytics-type="writing" data-analytics-id="${escapeHtml(entry.slug)}"${external ? ' target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"' : ''}>
   ${thumb}
@@ -1165,7 +1165,7 @@ function detailPage(collection, entry, activeKey) {
   <p class="article-meta">${metaLine([meta.org || meta.venue, meta.role, meta.type, meta.period || meta.date])}</p>
   ${isWriting && meta.summary ? `<p class="lede">${escapeHtml(meta.summary)}</p>` : ''}
   ${linkChips(meta.links)}
-  ${heroImage(meta, collection.name)}
+  ${meta.type === 'Personal' ? '' : heroImage(meta, collection.name)}
   ${markdownToHtml(entry.body)}
   ${articleDisclosure(isWriting)}
   ${shareLinks(pageUrl, meta.title)}

diff --git a/portfolio/content/writing/builder-platforms-grow-by-owning-the-agent-loop.md b/portfolio/content/writing/builder-platforms-grow-by-owning-the-agent-loop.md
@@ -11,7 +11,7 @@ shareTitle: Own the Agent Feedback Loop
 shareSummary: A DevX strategy for making critical developer tasks work across changing models and agent harnesses.
 shareImageAlt: Social card for Own the Agent Feedback Loop with a compact context, eval, outcome, and distribution loop.
 tags: ["developer experience", "ai", "evals"]
-order: 2
+order: 3
 draft: false
 noindex: false
 ---

diff --git a/portfolio/content/writing/can-i-build-an-ai-agent-that-doesnt-write-slop.md b/portfolio/content/writing/can-i-build-an-ai-agent-that-doesnt-write-slop.md
@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ updated: 2026-08-18
 canonical: https://ryanbaumann.dev/writing/can-i-build-an-ai-agent-that-doesnt-write-slop/
 aliases: ["/writing/why-i-fine-tuned-a-26b-model-on-my-laptop-instead-of-prompting-frontier-apis/"]
 tags: ["ai", "evals", "field notes"]
-order: 1
+order: 2
 draft: false
 noindex: false
 image: /img/writing/can-i-build-an-ai-agent-that-doesnt-write-slop-header.svg

diff --git a/portfolio/content/writing/devex-is-a-growth-discipline.md b/portfolio/content/writing/devex-is-a-growth-discipline.md
@@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ shareTitle: DevX Is a Growth Function
 shareSummary: Docs, code samples, advocacy, tutorials, and even talking to customers all have a limit. Own the friction, ship the fix, distribute the path, and measure the outcome.
 shareImageAlt: Social preview reading DevX Is a Growth Discipline beside a product, distribution, and measurement loop.
 tags: ["developer experience", "growth", "ai"]
-order: 3
+order: 4
 ---
 
 Between early 2025 and 2026, our open-source ecosystem more than doubled its unique active users, and API engagement for our open-source client libraries grew strongly. We moved those metrics by treating DevX as a growth discipline, not a documentation queue. Our product, engineering, UX, and technical writing teams treated product, distribution, and measurement as one system, because presence in a workflow is not proof of adoption.

diff --git a/portfolio/content/writing/why-we-make-decisions.md b/portfolio/content/writing/why-we-make-decisions.md
@@ -6,6 +6,9 @@ summary: AI makes generating options nearly free, which shifts the bottleneck to
 date: 2026-11-01
 updated: 2026-11-01
 canonical: https://ryanbaumann.dev/writing/why-we-make-decisions/
+order: 1
+image: /img/writing/why-we-make-decisions.svg
+imageAlt: Artifact card reading Personal Field Notes, Why We Decide, and values, principles, and human judgment.
 socialImage: /social/why-we-make-decisions.jpg
 shareTitle: Why We Decide Matters More
 shareSummary: AI makes options cheap, which maxes out judgment fatigue across work and life. Writing down explicit values is how you keep loud defaults from choosing for you.

diff --git a/portfolio/static/img/writing/why-we-make-decisions.svg b/portfolio/static/img/writing/why-we-make-decisions.svg
diff --git a/scripts/artifact-cards.mjs b/scripts/artifact-cards.mjs
@@ -121,6 +121,13 @@ const CARDS = [
     lines: ['official platform context for compatible coding agents'],
     footer: 'mapsplatform.google.com',
   },
+  {
+    file: 'writing/why-we-make-decisions.svg',
+    eyebrow: 'PERSONAL · FIELD NOTES',
+    title: 'Why We Decide',
+    lines: ['values · principles · human judgment'],
+    footer: 'ryanbaumann.dev/writing/why-we-make-decisions',
+  },
 ];
 
 const FLOWS = [

diff --git a/scripts/writer_app.mjs b/scripts/writer_app.mjs
@@ -250,7 +250,7 @@ function renderFullArticleHtml(rawMarkdown, collectionName = 'writing', theme =
   const tagsHtml = Array.isArray(meta.tags) && meta.tags.length
     ? `<p class="card-tags" style="margin: 0.5rem 0 1.25rem;">${meta.tags.map((t) => `<span>${escapeHtml(t)}</span>`).join('')}</p>`
     : '';
-  const heroHtml = meta.image
+  const heroHtml = meta.image && meta.type !== 'Personal'
     ? `<img class="article-hero" src="${escapeHtml(meta.image)}" alt="${escapeHtml(meta.imageAlt || title)}" />`
     : '';