Generative SVG cover system
The cover image on this card was rendered server-side from your slug. No designer, no upload, no asset pipeline. Deterministic geometry + type + cache headers.
Every journal and lab entry gets a generated SVG cover. Same input always produces the same output (slug-seeded hash drives every geometric decision), but the output is distinct enough that no two entries collide.
It's a single PHP file. No client-side JS. No image library. Just maths, type, and a radial gradient.
Cool palette for /lab. Warm palette for /journal. Tags become outlined pills bottom-right. Title sits in italic serif over a dot-grid that's pseudo-randomised from the slug's crc32. Cache headers say immutable, 30 days — Cloudflare and the browser will never re-render the same cover twice.
The trick we kept iterating: keeping it visually interesting without spending compute. SVG is XML — it gzips well, browsers parse it instantly, and search engines actually index the text inside it.