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Nick Taylor
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Advent of AI 2025 - Day 4: Building a Winter Festival Website with Goose

#goose #ai #adventofai

I've edited this post, but AI helped. These are meant to be quick posts related to the Advent of AI. I don't have time if I'm doing one of these each day to spend a couple hours on a post. 😅

For Day 4 of Advent of AI, I built a winter festival website and deployed it to Netlify using the Netlify Model Context Protocol (MCP) server within goose.

Live Site: https://winter-festival-nickyt.netlify.app

What I Built

A single-page winter festival site with:

  • Event schedule and countdown timer
  • 8-image gallery with lightbox
  • Light/dark mode with WCAG AAA compliance
  • 75 animated snowflakes with wind drift
  • Testimonials and footer
  • Theme persistence with localStorage
  • Scroll progress bar and back-to-top button

The Build Process

This built on Day 3's work. I had the basic structure, but needed to fix the light/dark mode. Both themes looked too similar initially, just different shades of dark backgrounds.

Fixing the Themes

I implemented a complete theme system using CSS custom properties:

Light Mode:

:root {
    --bg-primary: linear-gradient(135deg, #f8f9fa 0%, #e3f2fd 50%, #e1f5fe 100%);
    --text-primary: #1a1a2e;  /* Dark navy */
    --text-secondary: #424242; /* Dark gray */
    --text-light: #616161;     /* Medium gray */
    /* ... more variables */
}
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Dark Mode:

body.dark-mode {
    --bg-primary: linear-gradient(135deg, #0a0a0f 0%, #1a1a2e 50%, #2d1b3d 100%);
    --text-primary: #ffffff;   /* Pure white */
    --text-secondary: #e0e0e0; /* Light gray */
    --text-light: #b0b0b0;     /* Medium light gray */
    /* ... more variables */
}
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This ensured WCAG AAA compliance (7:1+ contrast ratios), true visual distinction between themes, and smooth transitions.

Other Fixes

Integrated the theme toggle into the nav menu instead of having it float separately. Fixed some alignment issues. Made the hero title match the logo color. Reduced gallery from 9 to 8 images for better grid balance. Enhanced snowflakes to adapt to the current theme.

Deploying with Netlify MCP

The coolest part was using the Netlify Model Context Protocol (MCP) server to deploy directly from the AI assistant.

What is MCP?

Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard created by Anthropic that enables AI assistants to securely connect to external tools and services. In this case, the Netlify MCP allows the AI to interact with Netlify's API to create sites and deploy projects.

How It Worked

I just said "ok deploy to netlify" and the AI:

  1. Queried existing Netlify projects
  2. Created a new site named "winter-festival-nickyt"
  3. Deployed the directory
  4. Checked deployment status

No terminal, no CLI commands, no Netlify dashboard. Just conversation.

Give It a Try

Not sure how deep I'll get into Advent of AI, but Day 4 was fun. Building and deploying a site with MCP integration was way smoother than the traditional workflow.

Even if you missed the first few days, jump in now! Head over to AdventOfAI.dev and see what you can build.

Check out the Netlify MCP if you want to try deploying with conversation.

Until the next one!

Photo by Bernd 📷 Dittrich on Unsplash

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