AI helping AI when migrating to Eleventy

Updated 15 Oct 2025

For about a decade, Harp has been my go-to static site generator for agib.dk. It worked well, but it hasn’t been maintained for years. Time to move on.

I chose Eleventy because:

• It’s conceptually close to Harp
• It has quite a simple model, yet is sufficiently powerful
• It supports .ejs templating, so I could reuse much of my existing template code
• It has an active community

I knew Harp well, but I had no experience with Eleventy. This would be new territory.

Using ChatGPT

A migration like this would probably have taken me a couple of weeks or more. This time, with ChatGPT, it took only a few working days.

The process:

1. Ask ChatGPT for step-by-step migration guidance
2. Paste in Harp code and get equivalent Eleventy solutions
3. Let the AI handle unfamiliar details while I connected the pieces

Most of the time, this worked well. The AI helped me understand Eleventy’s structure and gave workable layout and code examples.

The Loops

At times, ChatGPT got stuck—suggesting the same insufficient approach over and over, or failing to take a step back for "the bigger picture" or trying to create unnecessary complex solutions when there was a better, simpler one.

Here, my Harp and general coding knowledge helped. The concepts are similar enough that I could adapt old methods to make progress.

So, AI can speed up work immensely, but it still needs human judgment.

The Result

The agib.dk site now runs on Eleventy:

• .ejs layouts are still in place
• The build process is maintainable
• I’m no longer relying on unmaintained software

For Harp users, Eleventy is a realistic next step.

What’s Next

I plan to try:

• GitHub Copilot in VS Code for real-time AI suggestions
• Experimenting more with Henosia, Lovable and other AI-first design and coding/prototyping tools to see if they help in new projects

For now, agib.dk is on a supported platform, and future updates should be faster.