CLAUDE.md

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

Project Overview

Personal academic website for Cheng Nie (chengnie.com), built on Jekyll with the Academic Pages theme. Hosted on GitHub Pages.

Development Commands

# Serve locally with live reload
bundle exec jekyll serve --trace

# Install dependencies (after cloning or when Gemfile changes)
bundle install

Git Workflow

Commits go directly to master branch. GitHub Pages deploys automatically on push.

git add --all
git commit -m "description"
git push origin master

Content Architecture

Collections (in `_config.yml`)

_posts/ - Blog posts organized by language: en/ and cn/ subdirectories
_notes/ - Book notes/summaries (mostly Chinese titles as markdown files)
_pages/ - Static pages (research.md, notes.md, marathon.html, etc.)
_teaching/, _publications/, _portfolio/, _talks/ - Academic content collections

Key Pages

_pages/notes.md - Book notes grid with Goodreads-style covers
_pages/marathon.html - Marathon race history with embedded map
_pages/research.md - Research papers and projects

Site navigation defined in _data/navigation.yml. Currently active: Blog, Notes. Research and Teaching are accessible via the front page but removed from the nav bar.

Helper Scripts

`marathon.py`

Updates marathon tracking. Reads from marathon.tsv (location, date, time, event format), geocodes locations, generates marathon/map.html, and updates _pages/marathon.html table.

python marathon.py

`notes_add_text.py`

Processes Goodreads HTML widget output. Paste HTML into the html variable at top of file, then run to update _pages/notes.md with formatted book cover grid entries.

python notes_add_text.py

Content Conventions

Blog Posts (Chinese translations)

When creating Chinese translations of English posts:

Place in _posts/cn/ directory
Add -cn suffix to filename after date (e.g., 2026-01-04-cn-review2025.md)
Use metric units (km, Celsius) instead of imperial
Keep book titles/authors in original language, translate summaries

Book Notes

Stored in _notes/ as markdown files
Filename is URL slug (e.g., 看见.md → /notes/看见)
Remove $ characters to prevent LaTeX interpretation

Analytics

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) via _includes/analytics-providers/google.html with measurement ID in _config.yml
Page view badges via hits.seeyoufarm.com, embedded in _layouts/single.html footer

File Locations

Site builds to _site/ (git-ignored for local, committed on some branches)
Images in images/
Downloadable files in files/
SCSS styles in _sass/

Project Files

CHANGELOG.md - History of site updates (formerly UPDATES.md)
TASKS.md - Organized task tracker (In Progress / Todo / Done)
PROMPTS.md - Saved prompts for recurring workflows
CLAUDE.md - This file (instructions for Claude)

Cheng Nie