Portfolio agent-authorship disclosure

For the owner who says a project is "AI driven" or "agent built" while the existing copy implies they typed every line.

The goal is NOT an apology. A senior who can architect, direct and verify multi-agent output at scale is a rarer hire than a fast typist. Say it plainly, high up, with the verification floor attached - that turns the admission into the argument.

1. Model it as data, not prose

Hedged wording ("built with modern tooling") reads as evasion and rots. Add schema fields so every consumer renders it consistently:

build_mode: z.enum(['Hand-written', 'Agent-directed']).default('Hand-written'),
build_note: z.string().optional(),

Render in two places:

• A label on the card (Agent-directed) next to domain/year chips, and in the detail header - so the disclosure is visible before anyone clicks.
• A "How it was built" block in the detail overview carrying build_note.

Default must be the honest majority case so unmarked entries are not silently mislabelled.

2. Write a different note per project

A single boilerplate note is the same lie in new clothes. For each project state:

• The trajectory - "started hand-written, moved to harness-directed as it grew" is a much stronger claim than either pole, and is usually the truth.
• What is unambiguously the owner's - design, architecture, the judgement calls (which factors to weight, which cut feature to restore, where the abstraction boundary sits), and the verification.
• What the agents did - implementation against that spec.
• The verification floor - test counts, CI guards, in-emulator/on-device confirmation. Frame it as the thing that workflow requires, not a boast.

3. Sweep the rest of the copy

The schema field does nothing if role: still reads "Solo developer." Grep every surface for authorship-implying phrasing: role, summary, markdown body, CV bullets. Same pass: fix any project the owner calls unfinished - demote its category, kill "Shipped ..." outcome lines, and say "never completed" in the outcome itself. Keep the entry; the experience is the point.

Changed CV bullets mean a reprint; prove it still fits one page with portfolio-cv-pdf-from-site-content.

4. The trap: YAML plain scalars break on ": "

A build_note containing ... every line: I decide the design ... fails with bad indentation of a mapping entry at a column deep inside the string (js-yaml, re-checked 2026-09-24). Use a block scalar:

build_note: >-
  Long prose with: colons and "quotes", all safe here.

5. Verify on the built site

Not the dev server, not the source. Load the built output and assert:

• which cards carry the label (expect exactly the declared set),
• the detail header chip list,
• that the "How it was built" block exists in the overview panel,
• the unfinished project's copy contains the honest phrase.