loftusa.github.io

Personal website for Alex Loftus. Jekyll (Minimal Mistakes theme) on GitHub Pages + FastAPI chat API on Fly.io.

Build & Serve

bundle exec jekyll serve                    # Local dev server (localhost:4000)
bundle exec jekyll serve --config _config.yml,_config.dev.yml  # With dev overrides
bundle exec jekyll build                    # Static build → _site/

Chat API (experiments/)

experiments/chat_api.py — FastAPI app, Cerebras zai-glm-4.7 model, ChromaDB RAG
Fly.io app: llm-resume-restless-thunder-9259
Deploy: cd experiments && fly deploy
Endpoints: POST /chat (streaming), POST /reset, GET /logs/download
$2 USD cost cap per conversation

Key Structure

_config.yml / _config.dev.yml   Jekyll config (prod / dev overrides)
_data/navigation.yml            Nav menu
_pages/                         Site pages (about.md = homepage)
_posts/                         Blog posts (YYYY-MM-DD-title.md)
_drafts/                        Unpublished posts
assets/js/chat.js               Chat frontend
experiments/                    Chat API, RAG, evals
perfumes/                       Perfume Atlas pipeline (/perfumes/ + /perfumes/analyses/; has own README)

Interactive maps

/networks/ — co-authorship graph (_pages/coauthorship.html, assets/js/coauthorship-network.js)
/perfumes/ — perfume similarity atlas, 24k bottles by smell (_pages/perfumes.html + _pages/perfumes-analyses.html; renderer assets/js/perfumes-atlas.js; built by perfumes/build_atlas.py → assets/data/perfumes-*.json). See perfumes/README.md.
Both use layout: fullscreen (scrolling pages use layout: bare).

Blog Posts

Format: _posts/YYYY-MM-DD-title.md
MathJax: add mathjax: true to front matter
Markdown: kramdown with GFM, rouge syntax highlighting

Config

_config.yml — production (url: https://alex-loftus.com)
_config.dev.yml — local overrides (url: localhost:4000, analytics off)
_data/navigation.yml — top nav links

Package Management

Ruby/Jekyll: bundle install / bundle exec
Python: uv (use uv run <script>.py)
JS: npm