Docs: why-astrolabe origin drafts (uk + en)

docs/exploration/why-astrolabe.en.md

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+# Why Astrolabe exists
+
+I've worked with visualization tools for close to a decade, and for the last few years
+I've also taught data work in most of its forms — SQL, Python, spreadsheets, Power BI,
+Tableau, the list goes on.
+
+Out of everything I've used in that time, Vega-Lite is one of my favorite ways to make a
+chart. It combines things that almost never come together in one tool:
+
+- **It's an open standard.** A chart is a plain JSON file. No registration, no account,
+  no service that can be discontinued out from under it. Specs I wrote years ago still
+  render today, and I have every reason to believe they'll render in ten.
+- **It's web-native.** Most popular tools have to be installed (Tableau, Power BI) or run
+  inside a particular environment (Altair, ggplot). For teaching, that raises the floor
+  twice: technically — students on Linux can't install most BI suites at all — and
+  conceptually. I want to teach _visualization_, not programming.
+- **It's declarative.** This point is really an ode to the Grammar of Graphics that
+  ggplot popularized: you describe what the chart is, not how to draw it. My favorite
+  tool for preparing data is SQL, another declarative language, and Vega-Lite scratches
+  exactly the same itch.
+- **It's interactive.** This is what sets it apart from workhorses like matplotlib and
+  ggplot: cross-filtering, tooltips, and brushing are a few lines of JSON, not an
+  afternoon of event-handler code. Interactivity multiplies one chart into dozens — a
+  different view for every filter state a reader can choose.
+
+And yet, when I went looking for a comfortable place to write and keep these charts, I
+couldn't settle on anything. Vega-Lite came buried inside heavier BI tools, or in the
+official editor — a scratchpad that holds one spec at a time and keeps nothing. And using
+the full power of the format was fiddly in practice: to attach a custom font to a chart,
+you had to be handy with web development first. The low floor I praise to my students
+wasn't there for me either.
+
+So I decided to build my ideal tool for Vega-Lite charts :)
+
+At first it was just a snippet editor: a list of specs, and clicking one opens an editor
+with a live preview. Then datasets wanted to be their own thing — stored once, referenced
+by name from any chart, instead of pasted into every spec. Then a visual chart builder,
+for the days when you'd rather click than type. And then custom themes with your own
+fonts — the exact itch that used to require a web developer, now a file-upload away.
+
+Somewhere along the way the tool also acquired a stance. Everything stays in your
+browser: no account, no server, and no AI model reading your charts. Part of that is
+principle. Most of it is the plain reality that the data I chart at work is confidential,
+and I wanted a tool where that question simply never comes up.
+
+If you make charts with Vega-Lite — or you've been looking for a reason to start —
+[Astrolabe](/) is where mine live now.