Portfolio

I've built a sci-fi, terminal-style portfolio website that is a “mission dossier" of my journey in space science, hardware, and machine learning. Instead of a resume, it has interactive sections such as “Mission Logs” (projects), “Capabilities” (tech stack), and “Active Transmissions” (current focus).
The main problem was crafting a UI that felt like a real aerospace control terminal and classified dossier but was still responsive and performant. I also had to structure the data carefully so that the hover cards for “Mission Records” and “Credentials” could be rendered dynamically without weighing down the page.
I am really proud of the overall aesthetic and the narrative flow; it is not just a list of my skills but tells the story of a 15 year old aspiring astrophysicist from Kerala. I’m also proud to have tied my real world milestones like being a NASA Space Apps Global Nominee (Team RC_Real Coding) and my ISRO achievements into this cohesive “classified” theme.
Testing & exploring:
Scroll the 6 "Mission" sections or use the top nav.
Hover over the Mission Records and Credentials cards for verified information.
Easter Egg – Scroll to the very bottom of the page (Contact / Footer section) and then type akshith on your keyboard to unlock the Easter Egg! :D (also the solar map works it is time acurate so no quick movement)

What I made: My personal portfolio site — a single-file, deep-space-themed site built to represent my work in astrophysics, AI, and hardware to evaluators and collaborators. It runs a canvas starfield, a constellation-following cursor, and orbiting exoplanet animations and pulls live data from my GitHub (@Akshithsurya) so the projects section stays current without manual updates.
What was challenging: Getting the animations to feel alive without tanking performance. I had several separate requestAnimationFrame loops running at once early on, which caused visible lag on scroll. I consolidated them into a single scheduler, dropped a full-viewport SVG grain overlay that was expensive to render, removed backdrop-filter blur during scroll events, and added content-visibility:auto to keep off-screen sections from being painted. The site went through several visual identity passes before landing on the current cosmic direction.
What I'm proud of: It's a single HTML file — no framework, no build step — that still holds a coherent, deliberate aesthetic and runs smoothly on modest hardware, which matters given the site's audience.
How to test it: Visit the live link, scroll through the sections, and try moving the cursor near the starfield to see the constellation effect. The GitHub activity should reflect my actual repositories in real time.