Findings & Decisions

Requirements

  • Maintain personal website with Quarto
  • Document codebase for future Claude Code sessions
  • Blog section with ICE/CBP funding post complete

Research Findings

Site Architecture (from exploration)

  • Content model: Pages (.qmd in root), Posts (posts/*.qmd), Publications (YAML-driven)
  • Layout: Docked sidebar (not top navbar as originally planned in Context Document.md)
  • Theme: Cosmo with custom CSS overrides
  • Deployment: GitHub Actions → gh-pages branch → www.kevinmcnellis.com

Quarto EJS Template Behavior

  • Quarto processes EJS templates through markdown pipeline
  • HTML with 4+ spaces of indentation becomes <pre><code> blocks
  • Solution: Keep all HTML at left margin in .ejs files

Freeze Cache Behavior

  • Pages with freeze: true cache rendered output in _freeze/ directory
  • When content changes don’t appear: delete _freeze/<folder>/ and re-render

Color Palette (from styles/sidebar.css)

Color Hex Usage
Primary blue #4355a5 Links, active states, hover accents
Dark text #102a43 Headings, titles
Body text #486581 Descriptions, secondary text
Muted text #829ab1 Dates, metadata
Border #e9ecef Dividers, card borders

Technical Decisions

Decision Rationale
Custom EJS template for posts listing Control layout (title, description, date only)
No thumbnails in listing Chart images not legible at small sizes
Removed categories from listing Cleaner visual appearance

Issues Encountered

Issue Resolution
EJS HTML rendering as code Removed indentation from template

Resources

  • Live site: https://www.kevinmcnellis.com
  • GitHub repo: github.com/kevin-mcnellis/kevinmcnellis-site
  • Context Document.md: Original migration spec from WordPress

Visual/Browser Findings

  • (No browser/visual operations this session)

Update this file after every 2 view/browser/search operations This prevents visual information from being lost