CLAUDE

CLAUDE.md — Alpha’s Tech Garden

Overview

This is a digital knowledge garden — a collection of interconnected notes on technical and personal-interest topics. It is authored in Obsidian and published as a static website using Quartz v4. The live site is at techgarden.alphasmanifesto.com.

The author is Alpha, who also runs Alpha’s Manifesto. The garden exists as a complement to the blog: it holds quick, informal, interlinked notes rather than polished long-form articles.

Repository Structure

├── content/          ← Obsidian vault (all notes live here)
│   ├── _index.md     ← Landing page for the site
│   ├── templates/    ← Obsidian note template(s), excluded from publishing
│   └── <topic dirs>/ ← Notes organized by subject folder
├── quartz/           ← Quartz engine (components, plugins, styles, static assets)
├── quartz.config.ts  ← Site configuration (title, URL, theme, plugins)
├── quartz.layout.ts  ← Page layout configuration
├── docs/             ← Quartz documentation
└── package.json      ← Node dependencies (Quartz build toolchain)

Content Organization

Notes live inside content/ and are organized into topic folders: ai/ (the largest — ML, LLMs, embeddings, benchmarks, course notes from MIT 6.0002), tools/, development/ (with subfolders per language: python, javascript, typescript, css, sql, code_analysis), architecture/, canada/, blender/, math/, security/, databases/, mac/, finance/, formats/, ux/, management/, serverless/, links/, self-improvement/, android/, health/, and projects/. A few miscellaneous notes live at the root of content/.

New folders can be created freely when a topic doesn’t fit existing categories.

Tone and Style

Notes are concise, practical, and informal. They favor quick explanations, useful code snippets, and key takeaways over long prose. The voice is first-person when opinions appear, but most notes are reference-style: a definition or explanation followed by an example.

Common patterns in notes:

• A short explanation of the concept at the top (sometimes a blockquote from an external source).
• Code blocks with syntax highlighting when demonstrating tools or techniques.
• LaTeX math (rendered via KaTeX) for formulas and equations.
• A “Sources” section at the bottom with links or footnotes ([^label] style) pointing to the original references.
• Notes are self-contained but link outward to related notes and external resources.

Note Format and Frontmatter

Every note is a standard markdown file with YAML frontmatter:

---
title: "Note Title"
tags:
  - tag1
  - tag2
---

Some notes also include date created and date modified timestamps. Tags are freeform and topic-based (e.g., ai, llm, data_structures, algorithms, tools, unix, probability, technique). A note can have tags that cross-cut folder boundaries — for instance, a note in math/ might be tagged probability and ai.

The template at content/templates/entry.md provides the base frontmatter skeleton (title and tags).

How Notes Relate to Each Other

Obsidian uses wiki-links ([[Note Title]]) to create connections between notes. This vault uses them extensively:

• [[Note Title]] links to another note by its title. Quartz resolves these using shortest-path matching, so the folder path is not needed.
• [[Note Title|display text]] links to a note but renders custom display text.
• ![[image.png]] embeds an image stored in the vault.
• Notes often reference related concepts in other folders (e.g., a math note linking to [[PCA]], a tools note linking to [[xargs]], a Canada note linking to [[Parliament]]). These cross-folder links are what make the vault a “garden” rather than a flat collection.

When creating or editing notes, prefer linking to existing notes whenever a related concept already has its own page. This keeps the knowledge graph connected and navigable.

Obsidian Markdown Specifics

Obsidian extends standard markdown in several ways used throughout this vault:

• Wiki-links ([[...]]) as described above — the primary linking mechanism.
• Embedded content (![[...]]) for images and note transclusion.
• Footnotes using [^label] / [^label]: text syntax, frequently used in the Sources section.
• Blockquotes (>) used to quote external sources verbatim, usually with a footnote citation.
• Callouts (> [!type]) for highlighted boxes (though used sparingly here).
• Tags in frontmatter (tags: YAML list) rather than inline #tag syntax.
• LaTeX via $...$ (inline) and $$...$$ (block) — rendered by KaTeX through Quartz.

Quartz Configuration Highlights

• SPA mode and popovers are enabled for smooth navigation.
• Ignored patterns: private, templates, .obsidian (excluded from the published site).
• Drafts are filtered out via the RemoveDrafts plugin.
• Sitemap and RSS feed are generated automatically.
• Link resolution uses “shortest” path matching, so wiki-links don’t require full paths.

Smart Environment

The .smart-env/ directory inside content/ contains AI embedding data (.ajson files) from an Obsidian plugin that generates vector embeddings for semantic search across notes. This folder is not part of the published content.