Randomness

Status: Design idea, not yet implemented

Problem

Some site features need "randomness":

• "Random article" links
• Shuffled content blocks
• A/B test variants

But randomness breaks incremental builds - if outputs change every build, nothing is cached.

Solution

Dev mode: Random values come from fixed input (a constant seed). They never change, so:

• Incremental builds work perfectly
• Live reload doesn't thrash
• Developers see consistent output

Production builds: Generate a fresh seed at build time. Random values actually vary:

• Each deployment gets different "random" picks
• Still deterministic within a single build (same seed = same output)

Implementation Ideas

// In template context
fn random_seed(&self) -> u64 {
    if self.is_dev_mode {
        0xDEADBEEF  // Fixed seed for dev
    } else {
        self.build_seed  // Generated at build start
    }
}

// Template usage
{% set rng = random_seed() %}
{% set random_article = articles | shuffle(seed=rng) | first %}

This keeps the randomness as input to the build, making it cacheable.