Rohan Kapoor

Rohan Kapoor

he/him

Mathematics PhD at Dartmouth

CLAUDE.md

CLAUDE.md

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

What this repo is

Rohan Kapoor’s personal academic site, served by GitHub Pages at https://rkapoor1512.github.io. It is a fork of the academicpages Jekyll theme (itself a fork of Minimal Mistakes). The site is published from the master branch — pushing to master triggers a GitHub Pages rebuild.

A working to-do list of intended site changes lives in README.md (full CV, blog posts, dark mode, Twitter link, etc.). Treat that as authoritative for outstanding site work.

Running locally

bundle install                          # one-time, installs github-pages gem set
bundle exec jekyll serve -l -H localhost  # live-reload at http://localhost:4000

_config.yml is NOT reloaded automatically — restart jekyll serve after editing it.

JavaScript bundle (only needed if editing files in assets/js/):

npm install
npm run build:js    # uglifies + concatenates plugins + _main.js → assets/js/main.min.js
npm run watch:js    # rebuild on change

The site itself only loads assets/js/main.min.js, so source JS edits are invisible until you re-run the uglify build and commit the regenerated min file.

Architecture

Standard Jekyll layout, but with four custom collections in addition to posts:

  • _publications/, _talks/, _teaching/, _portfolio/ — each markdown file is one entry. Configured as Jekyll collections in _config.yml with output: true and permalink /:collection/:path/. The landing pages for each live under _pages/ (e.g. _pages/publications.md iterates over site.publications).
  • _posts/ — standard Jekyll blog posts; filename must be YYYY-MM-DD-title.md.
  • _pages/ — top-level pages (about, cv, blog, teaching, talks, publications, etc.). The nav bar that surfaces these is not auto-generated from _pages/; it is hand-edited in _data/navigation.yml, which is indentation-sensitive (YAML — a stray space silently breaks it; comment in the file calls this out).
  • _layouts/, _includes/, _sass/ — theme internals. _layouts/single.html is the default for most content; _layouts/talk.html is talk-specific. The author sidebar comes from _includes/author-profile.html, driven by the author: block in _config.yml.
  • _data/authors.yml, _data/ui-text.yml — multi-author overrides and i18n strings.
  • images/, files/, assets/ — static assets. CV PDF is referenced from navigation.yml as /assets/CV_Rohan__Last_updated_Feb2025_.pdf.

Bulk-generating publications/talks

markdown_generator/ contains Jupyter notebooks and equivalent .py scripts that turn publications.tsv / talks.tsv (or a BibTeX file via pubsFromBib.py) into one markdown file per entry under _publications/ or _talks/. Use these instead of hand-writing entries when adding many at once. The generated .md files are what the site actually serves; the TSV/BibTeX is only the source.

Dark mode

Theme is toggled by a button in the masthead and persisted in localStorage under the key "theme". The plumbing:

  • _includes/head/theme-init.html — synchronous inline script in <head> (before the stylesheet) that reads localStorage.theme, falls back to prefers-color-scheme, and sets data-theme on <html> to avoid FOUC.
  • _sass/_dark.scss — all dark-mode color overrides live here, scoped under html[data-theme="dark"]. The academicpages SCSS uses static $ variables (not CSS custom properties), so each surface that needs theming is overridden by selector here. Also contains styling for the .theme-toggle button.
  • _includes/masthead.html — the <button class="theme-toggle"> lives at the end of .greedy-nav, positioned absolutely at the right edge.
  • assets/js/dark-mode.js — wires the button, listens for OS-preference changes (only honored if the user hasn’t picked explicitly).
  • Loaded defer from _includes/head.html; not bundled into main.min.js.

When adding a new themed surface, add the override inside the html[data-theme="dark"] { ... } block in _dark.scss. The dark palette ($dark-bg, $dark-text, etc.) is defined at the top of that file.

Math (MathJax)

MathJax 3 is loaded from CDN in _includes/head/custom.html. Inline delimiters are configured as both $...$ and \(...\); display is $$...$$ and \[...\]. The config object is set on window.MathJax before the script tag — order matters. Code blocks and <pre> are in skipHtmlTags so math syntax inside fenced code is preserved verbatim.

Kramdown is configured with input: GFM. That means underscores inside $...$ (e.g. $f_n$) can be eaten by kramdown’s italic parser before MathJax sees them. Workarounds: escape ($f\_n$), use display math ($$f_n$$), or use \(f_n\). % is still a LaTeX comment inside math — $70%$ will break the closing delimiter.

Known repo quirks

  • images/profile_pic.JPG and images/profile_pic.jpg collide on case-insensitive filesystems (macOS default). git clone warns and only checks out one — keep this in mind before referencing either in front matter.
  • author.avatar is "file(1).png" — unusual filename with parentheses.
  • description in _config.yml currently ends in “test” (“Mathematics PhD student at Dartmouth test”) — likely a leftover and is part of <meta> / page titles.
  • analytics.provider is the string "false" (quoted), not the boolean — preserve when editing unless intentionally enabling analytics.
  • The site is constrained to the GitHub Pages plugin whitelist (see plugins: and whitelist: in _config.yml). Adding a new Jekyll plugin generally won’t work on GitHub Pages unless it’s on that allowlist.