Notes ·
Worth Wandering: HTML Energy
Joshua MorrisA project that treats making a website like something a person can still just do: open a text file, write some HTML, save it.
There is a point somewhere in the history of the web where making a website stopped sounding like something a person could just do. You need a framework. A build system. Dependencies. Hosting. Analytics. A deployment pipeline. Maybe a CMS. Probably an npm folder containing enough JavaScript to achieve self-awareness.
HTML Energy does almost the opposite. It would like to remind you that you can also open a text file, write some HTML, save it, and you have a website. That is basically the whole idea, and there is something refreshing about how seriously they take it.
HTML Energy was started by Laurel Schwulst and Elliott Cost in 2019. The stated goals are wonderfully uncomplicated: show people the web is still alive, make it more human and handmade, teach people to write HTML, and get people excited about doing it. The website follows those ideas all the way down. There isn't a polished design system trying to disguise itself as simplicity. The pages really are simple HTML documents. At the bottom, the site practically dares you to use View Source.
That detail matters. View Source was one of the ways a lot of us learned the web. You found something interesting, looked underneath it, copied the part you didn't understand, broke it, changed it, and eventually figured out why it worked. There wasn't a clean boundary between using the web and learning how the web worked.
HTML Energy seems interested in getting some of that feeling back. Not because CSS, JavaScript, React, or everything built since 1995 was a mistake. That's too easy, and it misses the point. The argument here is that underneath all of that machinery is still a document format that a person can understand.
HTML is remarkably forgiving. You can write a few lines badly and the browser will probably still show you something. You don't need permission to create a file. You don't need an account. You don't need to deploy it anywhere for it to be real. It can just exist on your computer because you made it.
HTML is writing
One of the better rabbit holes on the site is an essay called HTML is writing. The idea initially sounds almost too obvious. Of course HTML is text. That isn't quite what they mean. HTML Energy treats making a webpage as a form of writing in itself. You aren't necessarily building an application or designing a product.
You might be making a letter, a diary entry, a shrine to something you loved as a kid, a little place that feels calm, or a page intended for a sparrow sitting in the park. Those are actual prompts they encourage people to explore.
One of their observations is that you can write ordinary text, give the file an .html extension, open it in a browser, and technically you have made a website. That tiny shift in perspective is surprisingly important.
A website doesn't need navigation, a logo, a database, a hamburger menu, SEO metadata, and three calls to action. It can be a document. It can also be temporary, unfinished, strange, private, or completely pointless. The web gets much more interesting when those are all acceptable outcomes.
They took the computers outside
This idea gets considerably more interesting with HTML Day. Instead of turning HTML Energy into another online community where people mostly talk about making things, they started getting people together to actually make them. HTML freewrites happen in parks, cafés, public spaces, and, apparently, sometimes on boats.
People show up with laptops. Or pens and paper. And they write HTML together.
HTML Day has grown into a distributed annual event with independently organized gatherings around the world. The instructions for running one are closer to organizing a picnic than running a developer conference: find someone to organize with, choose a place, bring something to write on, spend some time making things, then show each other what you made.
I love this.
There is an entire industry built around teaching people technology by piling abstractions on top of abstractions. HTML Energy goes the opposite direction. Here is a text file. Here is a browser. Make something.
The events also remove the strange isolation that often comes with building personal websites. A lot of us sit at desks alone making things for people we may never meet. HTML Day turns making a webpage into something communal without requiring the resulting web to become a social network. You can be social while making something that still belongs entirely to you.
A website can have a sense of humor
Spend enough time wandering around HTML Energy and the seriousness of its ideas starts colliding with a very unserious presentation. There is a page of HTML memes. There is a page that essentially lists modern web development, corporations, debt, and assorted frustrations of existence before arriving at the solution: write HTML.
There was also an incident where someone accidentally donated $5,000, prompting brief excitement about an anonymous HTML Energy benefactor before the person contacted them in a panic and asked for the payment back. They refunded it and turned the whole thing into a page asking whether an HTML angel might still exist somewhere.
This is the sort of thing personal websites are unusually good at. It didn't need to become content strategy. Something funny happened, so they made a webpage about it.
Write something
Click Podcast and you find an entire Season 1 of conversations — glowing guest stars, short quotes, the same handmade tone as the rest of the site. There is also a small Write link in the navigation that opens a browser-based HTML editor.
It is basically an empty document. You type HTML on one side and can switch over to see what the browser makes of it.
There are much more sophisticated online development environments. That isn't really the point. The important thing is how little ceremony exists between arriving there and making something.
No project wizard. No package manager. No account creation. No discussion about architecture.
Start typing.
What I would improve
There are things about HTML Energy that could be clearer. The homepage currently still says HTML Day 2026 is “upcoming” on August 8 even though August 8 has already passed. Some of the deeper parts of the project are surprisingly easy to miss if you only glance at the front page. The navigation gives you places to go, but it doesn't really explain how large the idea becomes once you start following those links.
A more conventional website would probably fix all of that. It would have a big explanation of the mission, cards for the major projects, an event recap, maybe a carefully designed onboarding path.
I'm not convinced HTML Energy would be improved by becoming too good at behaving like a modern website. Part of its character comes from discovering that there is more here than the page initially tells you. You click Events and suddenly people are writing HTML in parks around the world. You click Podcast and there is an entire season of conversations. You click Write and you're staring at a blank file. You View Source and, well, there it is.
What I would change is smaller than a redesign. Update the stale event notice so the front door matches the calendar. Give a slightly clearer trail from the homepage into HTML Day, the essay, and Write for people who only skim. Keep the handmade friction everywhere else. The website isn't pretending, and that is one of its strengths.
The web is something people make
The thing I keep coming back to with HTML Energy is that it isn't really advocating for a technology. HTML won that argument decades ago. It's advocating for a relationship with the web.
The web can be something other than a collection of products we visit. It can be a material. Something you write on. Something you decorate badly. Something you learn by taking apart. Something you make for five friends. Something you build for nobody. Something you sit in a park and make because it sounded fun that afternoon.
HTML Energy's goals include making the web more human and handmade. I think the handmade part matters because handmade things carry evidence that somebody was there: the strange spacing, the unnecessary page, the silly joke, the outdated event notice somebody hasn't gotten around to changing yet, the source you can actually read.
None of those things scale particularly well. That's kind of the point.
There are plenty of places online designed to make us users. HTML Energy would rather remind us that we can still be authors. And all you really need to get started is a text file.
Worth wandering because: HTML Energy remembers that underneath all the machinery, the web is still a document format a person can write.