CLAUDE.md

This file provides guidance to Claude Code (claude.ai/code) when working with code in this repository.

What This Is

Charlotte Chen’s personal academic website, built on the Academic Pages Jekyll template (forked from Minimal Mistakes). It is deployed via GitHub Pages at https://charlottechen2002.github.io.

Local Development

Prerequisites (macOS):

brew install ruby node
gem install bundler
bundle install

Serve locally (live-reload):

bundle exec jekyll serve -l -H localhost

Site runs at http://localhost:4000. Changes to _config.yml require a server restart; all other file changes rebuild automatically.

Using Docker instead:

chmod -R 777 .
docker compose up

Site Architecture

Content is organized into Jekyll collections. Each collection maps to a directory of Markdown files with YAML front matter:

Key config files:

• _config.yml — site-wide settings: author info, URL, plugins, collection definitions, layout defaults
• _data/navigation.yml — controls which links appear in the top nav bar and their order
• _data/cv.json — structured CV data used by the JSON-generated CV page

Layouts and includes live in _layouts/ and _includes/. The sidebar author profile is in _includes/author-profile.html.

Styles are in _sass/ (SCSS), compiled to assets/css/.

Adding Content

• New portfolio project: create _portfolio/portfolio-project-N.md with front matter (title, excerpt, header.teaser, collection: portfolio)
• New teaching entry: create _teaching/YYYY-semester-role-N.md
• New nav link: add an entry under main: in _data/navigation.yml
• CV file: replace files/CharlotteChenCV.pdf; the CV link in nav points directly to this file

Markdown Generator

markdown_generator/ contains Jupyter notebooks that convert TSV spreadsheets into properly formatted Markdown files for publications and talks.

Deployment

Pushing to master triggers GitHub Pages to build and deploy automatically. The _site/ directory is the build output — do not edit it directly.