CLAUDE.md

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

About This Site

Matthew Jacob’s personal academic website (PhD Candidate, Harvard). Built on the Minimal Mistakes Jekyll theme (v4.27.2), hosted on GitHub Pages.

Build & Development Commands

# Install dependencies
bundle install

# Run local development server (detached) at http://127.0.0.1:4000
export PATH="$HOME/.rbenv/bin:/opt/homebrew/bin:$PATH" && eval "$(rbenv init -)" && bundle exec jekyll serve --detach

# Stop the server (replace PID with the one printed above)
kill -9 <PID>

# Minify JavaScript (after editing assets/js/_main.js)
bundle exec rake js

After any change, spin up the preview server so the user can verify at http://127.0.0.1:4000 before pushing.

JavaScript is authored in assets/js/_main.js and built to assets/js/main.min.js. Run rake js after any JS changes.

Architecture

The site is a standard Jekyll installation with minimal customization on top of the Minimal Mistakes theme:

• Content lives in _pages/ — index.md (homepage) and research.md are the only real content files
• Site config is _config.yml — author info, social links, analytics, theme skin (air)
• Navigation is _data/navigation.yml — Home, Research, CV links
• Custom styles are in assets/css/main.scss — this imports the theme, then adds overrides (larger author avatar at 200px, section header borders via .section-header, sidebar opacity fix, hidden permalink anchors)
• _layouts/, _includes/, _sass/ — Minimal Mistakes theme files; avoid modifying unless necessary

The docs/ and test/ directories contain theme demo/test content and are not part of the live site.

Deployment

Pushing to master triggers GitHub Actions (.github/workflows/build.yml), which bundles dependencies and updates the Algolia search index. GitHub Pages handles the actual Jekyll build and deployment automatically.