CLAUDE.md

Personal website for Nick Semenkovich, a physician-scientist at the Medical College of Wisconsin. Built with Jekyll and served by GitHub Pages at nick.semenkovich.com (see CNAME).

Stack

Jekyll on the github-pages gem (no Gemfile is checked in; .gitignore and _config.yml exclude it — install gem install github-pages locally)
Plugins: jekyll-sitemap, jekyll-feed, jekyll-seo-tag
Kramdown (GFM) with rouge syntax highlighting
Sass in _sass/ (partials: base, typography, nav, layout, post, responsive); entrypoint assets/css/main.scss
Fonts loaded from Google Fonts: Inter (400/500/600), JetBrains Mono (400)

Repo layout

index.md — home page bio (uses layout: default, not the page layout, because of custom bio flex layout)
blog.html — post index at /blog (uses layout: page)
404.html — at /404.html (no page.title, so no .page-heading is rendered)
_layouts/ — default.html (shell), page.html (default + optional h1), post.html (full article with reading-time + tags)
_includes/ — head.html, header.html (nav), footer.html
_sass/ — all styles; compiled via assets/css/main.scss
_config.yml — permalinks are /blog/:year/:month/:title/; default layouts wired per scope
_make_favicon.sh / _make_thumbnails.sh — one-shot ImageMagick helpers; both require brew install imagemagick. _make_thumbnails.sh expects images/ (source) and tn/images/ (dest); neither exists in the repo yet.
headshot.png — used by index.md and as the source for favicon.ico
There is no _posts/ directory yet — the blog index falls through to the empty-state message.

Local dev

gem install github-pages
bundle exec jekyll serve --livereload

(The bundle exec workflow in the README presumes you create a Gemfile locally — none is committed.)

Conventions

Color tokens are hard-coded stone/neutral hex values (e.g., #FAFAF9 bg, #1C1917 text, #2563EB link). There is no color-variables file — if you edit one, grep across _sass/.
Content width: .page-content is max-width: 800px; .content-narrow (used by post bodies) is max-width: 680px.
Navigation lives in _includes/header.html; external links get class="nav-external" which adds a → glyph via CSS.
footer.html prints the current year from site.time and links to the GitHub source.
Responsive breakpoints are 768px and 480px in _sass/_responsive.scss.
Body type is justified (text-align: justify in _sass/_typography.scss).

Known issues / rough edges (from a quick review)

Duplicate <title> tags. _includes/head.html:13 renders a manual <title>, and `

CLAUDE.md | Nick Semenkovich (semenko)

` on line 21 also emits one. Fix: either remove the manual <title> or pass `

Dead CSS selector. _sass/_layout.scss:60 targets .blog-index .page-title, but _layouts/page.html:5 renders the class .page-heading. Rename or remove.
Gemfile missing but referenced. README.md tells users to bundle exec jekyll serve, yet Gemfile/Gemfile.lock are git-ignored and excluded by _config.yml. New contributors will need to create one themselves.
_make_thumbnails.sh silently no-ops. It globs images/*.png and images/*.jpg, but no images/ directory exists.
Favicon is heavy. favicon.ico is ~240 KB because it’s generated from the full-resolution headshot.png at many sizes.
README tip is stale. The note about permalink: / and sitemap duplicates no longer applies — index.md uses the default permalink.

None of these block builds; the site renders and deploys. They’re worth cleaning up opportunistically.

Deploy

Push to main on semenko/semenko.github.io; GitHub Pages builds and serves at the custom domain in CNAME (NICK.SEMENKOVICH.COM). Domain is on the HSTS preload list (see comment in _includes/head.html).