Why the Monolith Today

Origin

Today is January 1st, 2026.

I spent the last six months staring at a blank screen. Not for lack of things to say. But because every platform I touched asked for a compromise.

WordPress wanted my data. Substack wanted my audience. Ghost wanted my money. Vercel wanted my control.

I realised I was not building knowledge. I was renting space.

The Monolith was born in that moment. It is not a blog. It is an act of digital sovereignty. Every line of httpd.conf, every rule in pf.conf, every SSL certificate generated by acme-client is a declaration: this space is mine.

The Connection

Why is this resource a fundamental brick for your sovereignty or your balance? How does it connect to the Monolith?

The Monolith is not just a website. It is an operating system for my knowledge.

• OpenBSD 7.8: Because security is not a plugin. It is an operating system.
• httpd + relayd: Because web traffic must be served by audited software, not black boxes.
• Astro: Because content must be static, fast, long-lived.
• Zero analytics: Because your attention is not a commodity.
• Zero cookies: Because your browser should not have to ask permission to exist.

Every technical choice is an ethical choice. Every configuration is a boundary. Every boundary is protection.

The Challenge

The challenge was not technical. It was psychological.

The inner doubt: “Do I really have to build everything from scratch? Isn’t it simpler to use Ghost?”

The answer came while I was configuring relayd for the first time. I spent three hours debugging a syntax error on line 17. When finally doas relayd -n returned configuration OK, I understood:

Simplicity is not using ready-made tools. It is understanding every layer of the stack.

Ghost gives you a beautiful admin UI. But it takes away your control. The Monolith gives you a terminal. But it gives back your sovereignty.

The challenge was accepting that the difficult path is the only one that leads to truly owning something.

Peace of Mind

Now that I have written this, I have clarified the contract with myself:

• I no longer seek the perfect tool.
• I build with sufficient tools.
• I no longer accumulate content “for later”.
• I publish what matters, when it matters.

Peace of Mind comes from knowing the system is under my control. No algorithm decides what I see. No platform lock-in holds me prisoner. No sudden update breaks my flow.

The Monolith is mine. And what is mine, I can maintain, modify, transfer.

Forever.

Technical Note:

• Stack: OpenBSD 7.8 + httpd(8) + relayd(8) + Astro 6 + pnpm
• SSL: acme-client with automatic renewal via cron (every 90 days)
• Backup: tar + daily cron, 14-day rotation
• Firewall: pf.conf with dynamic blacklist for brute-force
• Email: OpenSMTPD + Dovecot, self-hosted on Hetzner
• DNS: Dynadot, manual management
• Language profile: IT native, EN_GB C1, ES B2+native reading, FR technical (in acquisition)