feat: updated design for blog and blog details page w dynamic og generation

[adithyaakrishna]

Summary

Complete redesign of the blog (/studio) pages with 2 column sidebar layout, redesigned post cards, a 3 column blog detail page and added feature for dynamic og image generation

Fixes #(issue)

Type of Change

• Bug fix
• New feature
• Breaking change
• Documentation
• Other: Design overhaul / UX improvement

Testing

• Check the Layout of /studio
• Check the Layout of /studio/
• Check the OG img generation by /studio/og?slug=<slug>

Checklist

• Code follows project style guidelines
• Self-reviewed my changes
• Tests added/updated and passing
• No new warnings introduced
• I confirm that I have read and agree to the terms outlined in the Contributor License Agreement (CLA)

Screenshots/Videos

OG Image:

How it looks:

screen-capture.13.webm

[cursor]

PR Summary

Medium Risk
Medium risk because it adds new client-side navigation/state for blog filtering and a new server OG image route that fetches external fonts/GitHub data, which could impact rendering and reliability in production.

Overview
Redesigns the blog ("Studio") index and article pages with a new sidebar/search + category filtering experience, animated post grids, refreshed typography/styling, and a new sticky table-of-contents rail on article pages.

Adds dynamic Open Graph image generation via a new /blog/og route and updates SEO metadata to use it, plus introduces richer code rendering in MDX (Prism-highlighted code blocks, copy button) and mermaid diagram support.

Refactors changelog fetching/UI by adding an internal /api/changelog/releases proxy (optional GitHub token support) and reworking the changelog page/cards to consume it with updated styling/animations.

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[vercel]

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[greptile-apps]

Greptile Summary

This PR is a comprehensive visual redesign of the Sim blog (/studio) — introducing a persistent two-column sidebar layout, redesigned post cards with category badges, a three-column article detail page (TOC + article + author sidebar), and dynamic per-post OG image generation via a new /studio/og route.

Key concerns identified:

• Sidebar active state is never wired up (layout.tsx line 49): StudioSidebar is rendered without its activeTag prop, and Next.js layouts do not receive searchParams, so category highlights in the sidebar will never reflect the current filter.
• Unhandled font-load errors in OG route (og/route.tsx lines 44–47): The fs.readFile calls for font assets are not inside a try-catch; a missing font file will produce an unhandled 500 error for all OG image requests.
• Non-functional search input (sidebar.tsx lines 32–43): The search field renders and focuses but has no onChange, state, or search logic — it is purely decorative and may confuse users.
• Tag filter URL semantics changed (page.tsx line 22): ?tag= now expects category IDs (e.g. announcements) rather than raw tag strings (e.g. Announcement). Existing bookmarks or sitemap entries using old tag URLs will silently show all posts instead of the expected results.
• Untracked setTimeout handles (animated-blocks.tsx lines 53–79): Timers created inside startCycle are not tracked for cleanup, so they continue firing after unmount; a minor performance concern.

Confidence Score: 3/5

• Merging is safe for the visual redesign, but two functional regressions (sidebar active state, OG font error handling) should be fixed before this ships to production.
• The overall design work is solid and the new components are well-structured. However, the sidebar active-state feature is completely non-functional due to how Next.js layouts work (a logic issue, not a style one), and the OG image route will crash with 500 errors if the font files are missing. The tag URL schema change also silently breaks any existing filtered links without a migration path.
• Pay close attention to apps/sim/app/(landing)/studio/layout.tsx (sidebar wiring), apps/sim/app/(landing)/studio/og/route.tsx (font error handling), and apps/sim/app/(landing)/studio/sidebar.tsx (search input placeholder UX).

Important Files Changed

Filename	Overview
apps/sim/app/(landing)/studio/layout.tsx	Adds StudioSidebar to a two-column layout and a metadata template; activeTag is never passed to the sidebar so category active-state highlighting is always broken.
apps/sim/app/(landing)/studio/og/route.tsx	New dynamic OG image route using next/og and custom fonts; font file loading is not wrapped in error handling, so any filesystem issue returns an unhandled 500 to social crawlers.
apps/sim/app/(landing)/studio/[slug]/animated-blocks.tsx	New decorative animation component; uses mounted guard correctly but creates untracked setTimeout handles inside startCycle that cannot be cancelled on unmount.
apps/sim/app/(landing)/studio/sidebar.tsx	New left-rail sidebar with category counts and a search input; the search input is a non-functional placeholder and the activeTag prop it relies on is never supplied by the layout.
apps/sim/app/(landing)/studio/page.tsx	Blog index page redesigned with hero, featured grid and category filtering; tag filter query param semantics changed from raw tag strings to category IDs, which breaks existing tag-based URLs.
apps/sim/app/(landing)/studio/post-grid.tsx	Post grid refactored with new PostCard, FeaturedLeadCard, and FeaturedGrid components; category color badges and reading-time display added cleanly.
apps/sim/app/(landing)/studio/tag-colors.ts	New config module mapping raw blog tags to five curated categories with colors; clean and well-organized with correct fallback to the "insights" category.

Flowchart

%%{init: {'theme': 'neutral'}}%%
flowchart TD
    A[User visits /studio] --> B[StudioLayout]
    B --> C[StudioSidebar\nserver component]
    B --> D[main - children]
    
    C --> C1[getAllPostMeta]
    C1 --> C2[Count posts per category\nvia getPrimaryCategory]
    C2 --> C3[Render category links\nactiveTag always undefined ⚠️]

    D --> E{Route}
    E -->|/studio| F[StudioIndex page]
    E -->|/studio/slug| G[Article page]
    E -->|/studio/og?slug=| H[OG Image route]

    F --> F1[StudioHero]
    F --> F2[FeaturedGrid\nfeatured posts]
    F --> F3[PostGrid\nregular posts]
    F2 --> F4[FeaturedLeadCard]
    F2 --> F5[PostCard]

    G --> G1[AnimatedColorBlocks\nclient animation]
    G --> G2[Article MDX content\n+ prose-studio.css]
    G --> G3[ArticleSidebar\nauthor / TOC / tags / related]
    G --> G4[ShareButtons\nclient component]

    H --> H1{slug param?}
    H1 -->|No| H2[400 Bad Request]
    H1 -->|Yes| H3[getPostBySlug]
    H3 -->|Not found| H4[404]
    H3 -->|Found| H5[Read font files\nfs.readFile ⚠️ unguarded]
    H5 --> H6[ImageResponse\n1200x630 PNG]

    G3 --> G3a[TableOfContents\nclient - IntersectionObserver]

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_{Last reviewed commit: 34d3d78}

[icecrasher321]

@adithyaakrishna please fix merge conflicts issues, and resolve bugbot comments. I think we should be able to get this in soon.

[cursor]

OG font loader only extracts single weight from CSS

Low Severity

loadGoogleFont requests weights 400;500;700 but the regex only matches the first src: url(...) in the returned CSS. This means only one weight's font file is loaded. The ImageResponse then registers this single ArrayBuffer as weight 500, so text rendered at weight 400 or 700 will all appear as weight 500, losing visual hierarchy in the OG image (title, body, and labels all look the same weight).

Additional Locations (1)

• apps/sim/app/(landing)/blog/og/route.tsx#L335-L343

 

[cursor]

Cursor Bugbot has reviewed your changes and found 1 potential issue.

There are 2 total unresolved issues (including 1 from previous review).

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[cursor]

OG route crashes when Google Fonts fetch fails

Medium Severity

loadGoogleFont throws an unrecoverable error if the Google Fonts API is unreachable, returns unexpected CSS, or the regex fails to match. Since OG images are now the primary social preview for all blog posts (replacing static ogImage in SEO metadata), a transient Google Fonts outage would cause all blog post share previews to return 500 errors with no fallback, breaking social sharing site-wide.

Additional Locations (1)

• apps/sim/app/(landing)/blog/og/route.tsx#L56-L60