CLAUDE.md

This file provides guidance to Claude Code (claude.ai/code) when working with code in this repository.

What this is

The marketing/content website for Hearthfire Clay, a nonprofit community ceramics studio in Gilroy, CA. It’s a static Jekyll site — no application backend, no JS framework, no test suite. Class registration, payments, and scheduling are handled by an external service (Kilnfire), embedded via script tags.

Commands

Build/serve with Bundler + Jekyll (Ruby):

bundle install          # install gems (jekyll ~> 4.3, jekyll-sitemap, jekyll-environment-variables)
bundle exec jekyll serve    # local dev server with live rebuild, http://localhost:4000
bundle exec jekyll build    # production build into _site/

There is no lint, test, or CI command configured in this repo.

Architecture

Content model. Pages are mostly flat Markdown files at the repo root (index.md, about.md, classes.md, contact.md, donate.md, team.md, volunteer.md, policies.md), each with front matter selecting a layout. Two Jekyll collections hold repeatable content:

_classes/ — one file per class/workshop (front matter: title, weight, price, min_age, registration_url, intro_image, active). Subfolder _classes/workshops/ is just organizational; both plain and nested files are in the same classes collection (see collections.classes in _config.yml).
_team/ — one file per team member, team collection.

Both collections get layout auto-assigned via defaults in _config.yml, so individual class/team files don’t need layout: in front matter.

Class listing/sorting convention. Anywhere classes are listed (home page, _layouts/classes.html, mobile menu), the same Liquid pattern is repeated: split into classes with a weight (sorted by it) and classes without one (natural order), then concat — weighted classes always sort first. A class is hidden from listings when active: false is set in its front matter (checked in _includes/class-card.html and the menu injection in _includes/main-menu.html); the class’s own page still builds and is reachable by direct URL even when inactive.

Layouts (_layouts/) are thin wrappers that all extend default.html, which owns the <head>, header, footer, and global includes. Layout front matter can set a bodyClass and page-specific defaults (e.g. _layouts/class.html sets default_intro_image as a fallback when a class has none).

Includes (_includes/) hold reusable partials: header.html, footer.html, main-menu.html / main-menu-mobile.html (desktop/mobile nav, driven by _data/menus.yml), class-card.html (class summary card used on the home page and classes listing), social.html, seo-schema.html, plus third-party embed snippets (google-analytics.html, google-tag-manager-*.html, kilnfire-conversion-tracking.html, givebutter.html).

Data files (_data/) drive site-wide config outside of page content: menus.yml (nav structure, including the inject_classes flag that injects the live class list into a menu item), contact.yml, seo.yml, social.json, policies.json (Google Docs embeds for legal pages), features.json.

Styles. SCSS lives in _sass/, compiled from assets/css/style.scss (Jekyll’s Sass processor, compressed output per _config.yml). Structure: _sass/bootstrap/ is a largely unmodified Bootstrap 5.3 vendor copy (most component partials are commented out in style.scss — only what’s needed is imported); _sass/components/ holds this site’s actual component styles (one partial per component, e.g. _header.scss, _classes.scss, _intro.scss); _sass/pages/ holds page-specific overrides keyed to each layout’s bodyClass; _sass/libraries/hamburgers/ is a vendored mobile-menu-icon library. _bootstrap-variables.scss at the top level overrides Bootstrap’s default variables (brand colors, fonts, footer colors) before Bootstrap itself loads — this is the place to change the site’s color palette or typography.

Third-party integrations, all wired in via includes in _layouts/default.html: Google Tag Manager/Analytics, Givebutter (donation widget, embedded on the home page as <givebutter-widget>), and Kilnfire (class registration/e-commerce, embedded per-class via _layouts/class.html’s <div class="kilnfire-upcoming-classes" data-org-id="..." data-template-id="..."> and classembed.js, plus conversion tracking).

jekyll-serif-theme/ is a near-empty leftover directory (only IDE metadata) — not an active theme source, safe to ignore.

Content editing notes

Class/workshop body content is authored as raw HTML wrapped in a single <div class="... prose ..."> block inside the Markdown file, not as Markdown prose — match that pattern when editing class descriptions.
min_age and price in class front matter drive both the price/age line rendered on the class page (_layouts/class.html) and the summary shown in class-card.html; keep both in sync when changing a class’s pricing or age range.
llms.txt at the repo root is a hand-maintained summary of core site pages for LLM crawlers — update it when adding/removing/renaming top-level pages.