Writing · 24 Jun 2026
Six Websites in Ten Days
Meet MP1, a publisher that ships in a ZIP
Halfway June I came back from Amsterdam buzzing. A week and a half later six websites were live on a publisher that did not exist before: MP1, a static site generator that lives as a ZIP file inside my own CMS. This post is about what made that possible: automating the dull work with AI agents, so my time goes to the things that matter. It was exhausting, exhilarating and highly rewarding.
Amsterdam energy
Those days, and nights, were completely nuts, as I wrote in my notebook on 13 June. I had been in Amsterdam and was caught by the energy of real entrepreneurs, and by my own way of doing things from before the move to Limburg. It led to a list: a friend on board with five websites, another back on board with one, new connections with creative people in the Amsterdam nightlife, and Lemmid Handler, my order handling app, in production. Building sites for hospitality in Amsterdam is the Champions League of webdesign, I knew what I was getting into.
The dull work
Every website needs the same boring things: a web server configuration, a certificate, a place to upload, a way to publish. I have done this by hand a hundred times. In one weekend that became managed-web-configs: an nginx configuration with certificate, created in production fully automatically. Add a queue for downloads and the distribution of the engine itself, and the boring part is gone. Not because it is unimportant, but because it is the same every time. That is exactly what computers are for.
MP1
The Lemmid Manager is the CMS I built over the past decade: content, images and settings for every site live there. The proof of concept for a new generation publisher, MP1, turns the generator into a ZIP file that is stored in the site's own configuration. Check it out, change it, check it in. On save the Manager unpacks the ZIP, runs the build and syncs the result to the server. No generator lives on a laptop anymore, the Manager holds the only copy.
An AI agent works inside that same loop, on its own working copy, and reports back. This is the report I found on my terminal at 07:41 one morning: checked out, changed, verified, checked in, dress rehearsal passed. The video reel on the homepage now comes straight from the Manager at build time.
Rapid iteration
The effect of embracing AI is visible: complex challenges can be settled step by step. It is the agentic loop at full speed: try, look, improve, again, while the agent does the checking. willem.com, sjocombinatie.nl, k2amsterdam.nl, fishfries.nl, centrumbar.nl and lammetje.com, in ten days. Each one a real site for real people, with its own design, photos and story.
The best part is where the freed up time went: straight into the things that matter. The design, the words, the photos, the conversation with the owner about what the place is really about. That is the work only a human can do, and now there is more room for it.
The reaction of one of the owners, on the evening the site went live, says it all. And my own site got the same treatment: willem.com is on MP1 too, including the Dutch edition you are maybe reading right now.
Conclusion
On 23 June, late at night, I wrote in my notebook: "What a week and a half! We thought up MP1 and built it. It is insane! Now sleep." That is the honest summary. It is exhausting, exhilarating and highly rewarding at the same time: delivering cool and amazing things to more people.
The ambition has not changed since I wrote about staying a company of one: build systems, not projects. What changed is the speed. Automate the dull work and the rest of the day is yours, for the work that only you can do. Ha!
