Milestone 8 • Current Development (Towards v0.6.0) • September 2026

Jim's Direct Guidance

"looking at about-this-site, good start, remove install/run section, add LLM/agentharness to technology stack in prominent position. add link to release notes, git hub repo, add an apps category to the main menu, and some term for art exhibits/tours, and such they are posts, but with all emphasis on photos, so more like reads, or views... we will have a data directory for any tabular, info type static data sources."

Critical Course Corrections & Remediation

• The "Views" Concept: Rather than generic photo galleries or standard blog posts, Jim established a dedicated stream parallel to Reads: photo-heavy visits to art museums, exhibitions, and architectural spaces with curatorial critique and personal opinions.
• Static Data Directory (content/data/): Centralized all tabular, info-type datasets (JSON, CSV, markdown manifests) in content/data/ to decouple raw data accumulation from presentation.
• The Zero-JS App Boundary: Clarified the strict separation of concerns: editorial reading pages remain 100% Zero-JS, while interactive applications operate in isolated standalone subpaths (output/apps/**).

Release v0.5.5 • September 2026

Jim's Direct Guidance

"we've done a lot lets bump version to .5.5 and create a release note, using github capabilities/reporting/best practices, before creating .5.5, create release documents for .1, .2, .3, .4 and .5. not lots of detail, just good initial overview then concise lists of features/changes/bugs fixed... remove the site glossary, changed my mind, we will just document terminology in docs as needed."

Critical Course Corrections & Remediation

• Glossary Removal (Changed Mind): Abandoned planned standalone glossary page. Jim recognized that isolated terminology dictionaries become stale; technical terms are now defined contextually in documentation and README.md.
• Continuous Learning (/learn) Persistence: Mandated that when solutions, user preferences, or error fixes are identified, the agent must update JOURNAL.md and permanently amend .agents/agent_rules.md.
• Mermaid Diagram Syntax Fix: Raw angle brackets (< 960px) broke Mermaid v10.9 rendering in generated PDFs. Escaped syntax and added automated SVG verification to tools/generate_cheatsheet_pdfs.py.

Releases v0.5 & Accessibility • August – September 2026

Jim's Direct Guidance

"can we add in page controls to switch between dark and light, high contrast, and larger text? ... on desktop the single column leaves too much empty space, but in portrait we want pure single-column reading flow. on mobile make sure the list isn't cluttered with giant excerpts."

Critical Course Corrections & Remediation

• Pure CSS :has Switchers (Zero-JS Constraint): Adding interactive theme and text-size switchers typically invites JavaScript. Jim held the line on Zero-JS. Implemented semantic <input type="checkbox"> toggles in HTML paired with CSS :has() pseudo-classes.
• Orientation-First Layout: Discarded naive screen-width-only breakpoints. Implemented dual-axis layout logic: Portrait viewports always render single-column flow; Landscape viewports (>= 960px) render the 2-column magazine grid.
• Progressive Density: Replaced static excerpts with .post-detail (full excerpt on desktop) and .post-teaser (concise one-line title feed on mobile) with pure CSS media queries.

Releases v0.3 & v0.4 • July – August 2026

Jim's Direct Guidance

"the lane tags look like loud web buttons or pills, get rid of them. and on pages like About or Reads, why is there an h1 saying About right under the active About menu link? get rid of the duplicate titles."

Critical Course Corrections & Remediation

• Zero Pills Mandate: Scrapped heavy button badges. Category lanes were converted to quiet, elegant text links (.lane-link) with inline bullet separators.
• Title Deduplication: Eliminated redundant <h1> headers on standalone pages (about.html, reads.html, gallery.html). The active navigation tab itself designates page context.
• Obsidian Frontmatter Reader: Built custom reader in pelicanconf.py to seamlessly parse standard YAML frontmatter blocks (---) authored directly inside Jim's Obsidian vault.
• GitHub Pages Jekyll Trap: Bypassed default Jekyll processing using .nojekyll to preserve folder structures and raw assets.

Releases v0.1 & v0.2 • Initial Architecture • May – June 2026

Jim's Direct Guidance

"retire the old Nikola setup... this is my personal site, not an AI playground. I write all my posts, notes, book reflections, and select all my photos in Obsidian. You are here to manage the build system, templates, CSS, and automated testing. Keep documentation to 3 files: README, PLANNING, JOURNAL."

Critical Course Corrections & Remediation

• Human Authorship Boundary: Codified Rule 1 in .agents/agent_rules.md: Agent is strictly prohibited from generating, ghostwriting, or synthesizing personal opinions, memories, or essays. Jim owns 100% of prose and curated media.
• Placeholder Purge: Removed all synthetic AI copy from initial prototypes; only Jim's authentic writing from his Obsidian vault is published.
• The 3-Document Governance Rule: Context is strictly consolidated into README.md, PLANNING.md, and JOURNAL.md, ending sprawling documentation and unmaintained notes.