CLAUDE.md — Project Guide for Claude Code

Project Overview

This is Saani Rawat’s personal academic website, hosted on GitHub Pages at saannidhya.github.io. It is built with Jekyll using the AcademicPages template (a fork of Minimal Mistakes).

Tech Stack

Static Site Generator: Jekyll (Ruby)
Templating: Liquid templates + Kramdown Markdown
Styling: SCSS (in _sass/)
Hosting: GitHub Pages (auto-builds on push to master)
Theme: AcademicPages / Minimal Mistakes

Repository Structure

_config.yml          # Site-wide settings (title, author, collections, plugins)
_data/
  navigation.yml     # Header nav links
  cv.json            # Structured CV data
_pages/              # Top-level site pages (about, research, cv, teaching, etc.)
_publications/       # Individual publication entries (Markdown + front matter)
_teaching/           # Teaching entries
_talks/              # Talk entries
_posts/              # Blog posts (if used)
_portfolio/          # Portfolio entries
_layouts/            # Page layout templates (HTML + Liquid)
_includes/           # Reusable HTML partials (author-profile, head, footer, etc.)
_sass/               # SCSS stylesheets
assets/              # Static assets (JS, CSS, images)
images/              # Site images (avatar, etc.)
files/               # Downloadable files (CV PDF, papers, etc.)

Navigation is controlled by _data/navigation.yml. Current active pages:

About (/) — _pages/about.md
Research (/research/) — _pages/research.md
Teaching (/teaching/) — _pages/teaching.html
CV — links to files/Saani_Rawat_CV.pdf

Content Conventions

Page content uses inline HTML <span style="font-size:.9em;"> for text sizing
Research entries are hand-written in _pages/research.md (not using the _publications collection for display)
The _publications/ collection exists but is not linked in navigation
Front matter follows Jekyll standards (layout, permalink, title, author_profile)

Development

Local Preview

bundle install
bundle exec jekyll serve

Or via Docker:

docker-compose up

Deployment

Push to master branch — GitHub Pages builds automatically.

Editing Guidelines

Do not break existing page layouts or navigation without confirming with the user
Keep inline styling consistent with existing patterns (font-size: .9em for body text)
PDFs and downloadable files go in files/
Images go in images/
When updating research content, edit _pages/research.md directly
When updating the about page, edit _pages/about.md
Always test Markdown/HTML changes for proper rendering before committing

Saani Rawat