Building Chewie Mode with Claude
I wanted the homepage of this site to behave more like a concert poster than a blog.
Most Ghost themes assume a chronological feed. That works well for writing, but it makes it harder to highlight projects. I wanted a layout where one project could headline the page while others appeared as supporting acts.
The Solo theme was already close to that idea. It has minimal navigation and a structure designed for personal publishing, so it became the starting point.
From there I began modifying the theme with Claude Code. Instead of editing templates file by file, I could describe the change I wanted and review the diff before committing it. The repository is public so anyone interested can see how the theme evolved and how Claude Code helped modify the original Solo templates.
Where Chewie Mode Came From
The visual language came from early hip hop concert posters, especially the ones collected in the book Born in the Bronx. Those posters rely on oversized type, starbursts, simple rules, and bold layouts printed on colored paper.
The name came from the starting point. The original theme is called Solo, which immediately made me think of Han Solo. The headlines in this theme stretch across the page and carry some of that same energy, so Chewie Mode felt appropriate. It is also a small nod to the hidden Chewbacca mode on Smugglers Run at Disneyland.
My goal was to make the site read more like a show poster than a blog.
Early hip-hop show posters featured in Born in the Bronx.
Reworking the Homepage
The biggest change was the homepage. Instead of a traditional feed, the page behaves like a concert lineup. One headline entry appears at the top, followed by two supporting entries side by side. Additional posts appear below, and a final entry closes the page. This layout makes it easier to highlight current projects while still showing recent writing.
It also mirrors the rhythm of the posters that inspired the theme.
Tag pages follow the same idea. Each tag appears on top of a stretched starburst background and the list of posts reads like a show bill.
Building the Visual System
The typography follows the same logic as the posters with Inter Black carrying the oversized headlines. Source Serif 4 handles body text and IBM Plex Mono appears in navigation and metadata.
Several decorative elements were redrawn from the posters themselves. Stars and arrows were sketched by hand, refined in Figma, and exported as SVGs.
Post backgrounds rotate automatically based on the day the post is published. The colors can be configured in the Ghost theme settings, which makes it easy to adjust the palette without editing the theme.
Simplifying Solo
A large part of the work involved removing pieces of the original theme. Solo includes several layout options that Chewie Mode doesn't need. The typographic and parallax feed variants were removed, along with alternate About page layouts and the built in subscribe form. I had Claude pull the pagination as well, since I'm locking the homepage to a set of recent posts with tag pages and deep-linking to find older posts.
I added a projects section to the homepage and pages tagged “Project” appear inside a bordered box labeled “special guests,” which gives projects a dedicated space within the poster layout.
Some areas of Ghost were intentionally left unchanged. Signup flows, payment pages, and account screens still use the default Ghost templates. The focus was on the public pages where the visual system matters most. I'm not sure if I'll spin up a subscription offering just yet.
One Small Detour
I did bump up against on small issue with fonts. Originally the theme used self hosted WOFF2 files. When the theme was uploaded to Ghost Pro, the fonts occasionally became corrupted during compression.
The simpler solution was to switch to Google Fonts and remove the self hosted files. Content delivery networks such as Cloudflare sometimes compress or transform assets in ways that can interfere with font delivery, so loading the fonts directly from Google avoided the issue. From what I was able to find, this is a known issue.
Finishing Details
I spent the final day of my roughly four day Claude Code pairing sesison on small interaction details.
- Buttons use a simple treatment: white background, black border, and uppercase mono text. Hover states invert the colors.
- Homepage headlines highlight on hover by switching to a black background with white text. The effect wraps cleanly across multiple lines.
- Navigation text remains lowercase across breakpoints, and sign in links move to the footer on smaller screens.
One last layout bug appeared on pages with very little content but was easy to fix. The main content container was not stretching across the page because of a flexbox interaction. Adding a single width: 100% declaration resolved the issue. Thanks, Claude!
What I’ll Be Iterating On Next
The theme is functional, but a few pieces still need attention since I'm not actively using them in any of my recent posts. Ghost cards such as Bookmark, Button, Callout, Toggle, and File still use their default styling. I eventually want those components to match the poster aesthetic used throughout the rest of the theme.
I also plan to configure topic based newsletters so readers can subscribe to specific projects or writing series instead of a single global list. My interests are diverse and I don't expect readers to be interested in everything!
Most importantly, I want to keep filling the posters themselves. The site is designed to highlight the work, whether that is a new project, a piece of writing, or instrumentals I publish as S. Victor Martin.
Onward!
