AGENTS.md

Guidance for AI coding agents working in this repository.

What this is

Kevin Ren’s academic personal website, hosted on GitHub Pages at https://ren-kevin.github.io. It is a Jekyll site built on the academicpages template (a fork of Minimal Mistakes). GitHub Pages builds the master branch automatically on push; there is no CI, test suite, or build step to run before committing.

Most of the template’s demo content is still present but unused. The live site is small: a home page, a research page, a CV page, and a contact page.

Layout

Path	Purpose
`_config.yml`	Site-wide settings, author sidebar (name, bio, avatar, Google Scholar, LinkedIn).
`_data/navigation.yml`	Top nav: Research, CV, Contact.
`_data/links.yaml`	Paper link lists, keyed by a short slug (e.g. `kr_jmp`, `fpf_ban`). Each entry is a list of `{name, url}` buttons.
`_pages/about.md`	Home page (`permalink: /`). Bio blurb plus CV download button.
`_pages/research.md`	Research page. Sections: Job Market Paper, Refereed Publications, Working Papers, Work in Progress.
`_pages/cv.md`	CV page. Just a download button for `files/cv.pdf`.
`_pages/contact.md`	Address and email.
`_pages/old/`	Unused template pages, excluded from the build in `_config.yml`. Leave alone.
`_includes/paper_entry.html`	Custom include that renders one paper on the research page. See below.
`files/`	PDFs served at `/files/...`. `cv.pdf` is the live CV. Papers live under `files/working_papers/<slug>/` and `files/published_papers/`.
`images/IMG_6500_crop2.jpg`	Sidebar avatar.
`_sass/custom.scss`	Site-specific style overrides. `_sass/_buttons.scss` defines `.btn--generalbutton`, used for all paper/CV buttons.
`_publications/`, `_talks/`, `_teaching/`, `_portfolio/`, `_posts/`, `_drafts/`	Template demo content. Not linked from nav and not used on the live site.
`markdown_generator/`, `talkmap*`	Template tooling, unused.
`_site/`	Build output, gitignored. Never edit.
`dfasdfas`	Stray file containing an old diff. Harmless; ignore.

How papers are added or updated

A paper on the research page is two edits:

Add the link list to _data/links.yaml under a new slug:

my_paper:
  - name: "Paper"
    url: "https://ren-kevin.github.io/files/working_papers/my_paper/draft.pdf"
  - name: "SSRN Version"
    url: "https://papers.ssrn.com/..."

Add an entry to _pages/research.md in the right section:
```liquid

Paper Title
with Coauthor One and Coauthor Two
Journal Name, 2026, 18(1): 44-87

   `coauthors`, `status`, and `links` are all optional. Omit `links` for work
   in progress with no PDF. `status` is rendered in italics and is used for
   publication venues or "Forthcoming at ...".

Paper PDFs go in `files/working_papers/<slug>/` (or `files/published_papers/`
for published versions). URLs in `links.yaml` are absolute and must match the
actual path on disk under `files/`. Double-check the path exists before
committing; a wrong URL silently 404s on the live site.

Updating the CV is just replacing `files/cv.pdf`. No other edit needed.

## Conventions

- **Minimal changes.** This is a content site maintained by one person. Do not
  refactor the theme, update dependencies, or remove unused template files
  unless asked.
- **Don't touch `_config.yml` casually.** It is the author profile and site
  identity. Changes there affect every page.
- **Keep the tone of the existing pages.** Short, plain, academic.
- **Commit messages** follow the existing style: short lowercase phrases
  describing the content change (e.g. `minor cv update`, `jmp revision`).
- Paper titles are rendered in the steel-blue bold style
  (`#4682B4`) by `paper_entry.html`. Don't inline styles in `research.md`.

## Running locally

Ruby 3.2 and Bundler are installed on this machine. GitHub Pages pins
Jekyll 3.9 via the `github-pages` gem.

```bash
bundle install
bundle exec jekyll serve

Then open http://localhost:4000. Always prefix with bundle exec; running jekyll bare fails with a gem activation error. _config.dev.yml can be layered in with --config _config.yml,_config.dev.yml to disable analytics and use the localhost URL.

Local builds are optional. Most changes are markdown or YAML edits that are safe to verify by reading.

Deploying

Push to master. GitHub Pages rebuilds within a minute or two. There is no separate gh-pages branch in use (the staticman config that mentions one is leftover template config).