Adding a .ai Domain

This online journal started out as NICKTONG.md, and goes by the same domain name. The .md was a nod to CLAUDE.md, the instruction file convention used by AI agent frameworks, and to Markdown, the plain-text format behind most of what I build. For anyone in the developer world, the domain name was a neat little Easter egg.

For everyone else, it turned out to be a cause for concern. When I first shared the nicktong.md link with one of my friend groups on WhatsApp, the immediate consensus was that my account had been hacked, and it took another friend looking to discuss something I wrote before others realised it was a legitimate link. Another assumed I was building some kind of medical website, because the only “MD” that came to his mind was WebMD. The domain I had chosen for its cleverness was, to most of the people I actually share things with, a phishing link at best and a health portal at worst.

So nicktong.ai now points to the same site. It says what it needs to say without requiring anyone to know what a Markdown file is or to take a leap of faith on a link that looks like it will steal their banking credentials. The original nicktong.md still works, and the Easter egg would hopefully still have its charm for the right audience. If nothing else, a good reminder to always seek out varied perspectives, preferably before your friends stage an intervention!

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