intotheeast-com/CLAUDE.md

CLAUDE.md

0. Project specifics

Only ever write changes in this folder (travel-blog-intotheeast/) or its subfolders.

Folder explanation

• ./: Grav CMS dev environment for intotheeast travel blog
• scripts/: Server install and maintenance scripts
• user/: Site content, config, pages, and theme (standalone git repo — do not modify from here)

Environment

Never read .env — it contains sensitive credentials. You may pass it to commands (e.g. docker compose, make) but never read its contents directly. Ask the user if you need environment-specific information.

Remote operations

Always use make commands for anything on the production server (make remote-install-plugins, make remote-clean, etc.) — never SSH directly since credentials live in .env. If a remote operation isn't covered by an existing make command, either ask the user to run it manually or suggest adding a new make command if it seems reusable.

Content sync

• make content-push — commit and push user/ to Gitea (triggers production pull via webhook)
• make content-pull — pull latest from Gitea to local
• plugins.txt is manually maintained — installing a plugin via Admin does NOT update it

User repo gitignore

Only these folders are tracked in the user/ Git repo: pages/, config/, accounts/, themes/. The plugins/ and data/ folders are excluded.

1. Environment modes

Rule: do not switch modes during development

Never toggle between development and production mode mid-session. If a caching or config issue appears, fix it at the application level (plugin, template logic) rather than temporarily flipping a mode flag to work around it. Mode switches introduce inconsistent state and make bugs harder to reproduce.

Development mode (current)

Active settings in user/config/system.yaml:

Setting	Dev value	Why
twig.cache	false	Theme file edits take effect immediately; no stale compile errors

With these settings, Grav rebuilds templates on every request. This is intentionally slower but means you never need to flush cache after editing a .html.twig file.

Production mode (not yet configured)

Before going live, change in user/config/system.yaml:

Setting	Prod value	Why
twig.cache	true	Templates compiled once and reused; safe because theme files don't change at runtime

Pre-launch smoke test required: with twig.cache: true, submit one post via /post and confirm the entry appears in /tracker immediately. This verifies the cache-on-save plugin (BUG-001 fix) works correctly with caching enabled.

What the cache-on-save plugin handles

The custom plugin at user/plugins/cache-on-save/ clears Grav's page-tree cache on every new-entry form submission. This ensures new posts appear in the tracker feed immediately in both modes — it does not depend on whether Twig caching is on or off.

2. Local development setup

First-time setup after cloning

user/plugins/ and user/data/ are excluded from git but Grav requires them to exist. Create them once after cloning:

mkdir -p user/plugins user/data

Then run make setup (starts Docker + installs plugins).

After make install-plugins: fix cache permissions

If the site returns a 500 error after plugin installation or after recreating the container, run make fix-perms. This creates uid 1000 in the container, chowns /var/www/html to 1000:1000, and reloads Apache. Always run make setup (not just make start) after docker compose down && up to ensure permissions are correct.

Language URL prefix

If Grav redirects to /en/... URLs, ensure user/config/system.yaml contains:

languages:
  supported: [en]
  include_default_lang: false

Without include_default_lang: false, Grav adds a language prefix to all URLs even for single-language sites.