CLAUDE.md

Project Overview

This is a Jekyll-based personal academic website for Binesh K Sadanandan, hosted on GitHub Pages at bineshkumar.me. It uses a customized Minimal Mistakes theme.

Writing Style Guide

All research content, blog-style writing, and page copy on this site must follow these rules:

Voice and Tone

Write in first person. Be conversational but not sloppy. Use contractions naturally (I’ve, it’s, we’re, that’s). Start sentences with conjunctions when it fits the rhythm. Ask rhetorical questions. Address the reader directly. Sound like someone explaining their work to a smart friend in a different field.

Avoid academic stiffness. Phrases like “it should be noted that” or “it is important to consider” are red flags. Just say what you mean.

Strict Rules

Rule	Requirement
Banned Words	Never use: delve, landscape, tapestry, realm, pivotal, underscore, foster, spearhead, leverage, transformative, crucial, interplay, multifaceted, paradigm, synergy, utilize, facilitate, innovative, cutting-edge, robust, comprehensive, nuanced, game-changing, groundbreaking
Punctuation	Never use double dashes (–) or em dashes. Use commas, colons, semicolons, or separate sentences
Voice	Write in first person. Use active voice. “We found” not “it was found.” “I ran the experiment” not “the experiment was conducted”
Tone	Conversational but professional. Curious and honest. Never salesy or hype-driven
Abbreviations	Expand on first use with abbreviation in parentheses. Example: “Vision-Language Model (VLM)”
Bullet Points	Avoid. Use tables for structured information or write in flowing prose

Technical Depth

Don’t shy away from technical content. Include equations, code snippets, and detailed methodological discussions, but explain why each piece matters as you go.

When introducing a concept, give the reader a mental model first. What is this thing trying to do? Why would someone invent it? Then layer in the technical details.

Use concrete examples liberally. If you’re explaining attention mechanisms, pick a specific sentence and walk through what the model actually computes. If you’re explaining a loss function, show what happens with specific numbers.

Structure

Use conversational headers that tell the reader what they’ll learn. Something like “Why standard fine-tuning breaks down” works better than “Experimental Setup.”

Vary paragraph lengths. When presenting comparisons, structured data, or multiple alternatives, use tables rather than bullet points.

Element	Guidance
Opening	Start with a hook. A surprising result, a frustrating problem, or a question you couldn’t stop thinking about. Don’t start with “In this post, I will discuss…”
Context	Give the reader enough background to understand why this matters. Assume smart but non-specialist readers. Build intuition before formalism
Core Content	Walk through your main ideas, experiments, or findings. Show your reasoning. Include failures and pivots, not just successes
Takeaways	End with what you learned, what surprised you, or what questions remain open

Honesty About Research

Talk about what confused you. Describe the baseline that didn’t work and why. Mention the hyperparameters you had to tune for three weeks. Share the plot that made no sense until you found the bug.

Don’t be self-deprecating to the point of undermining your work. Confidence and honesty can coexist.

Citation Integrity

If you reference prior work, cite it accurately using only information provided. Do not invent citations. If a claim needs a reference and you don’t have one, flag it with “[CITATION NEEDED]” so the user can fill it in.

Readability

Aim for a Flesch reading score around 60 to 70. Favor plain English. If a simpler word works, use it. “Use” not “utilize.” “Show” not “demonstrate.” “Find” not “ascertain.”

Design Theme

The site’s typography matches bineshkumar.me/notes:

Element	Font
Body text	Georgia (serif)
Headings and UI	IBM Plex Sans (sans-serif)
Code blocks	Monospace

Key File Locations

File	Purpose
_data/navigation.yml	Site navigation menu
_pages/research.md	Research summary page
_pages/publications.md	Publications archive (auto-groups by pub_type)
_pages/about.md	Home page
_publications/	Individual publication entries
_portfolio/	Portfolio project entries
_config.yml	Main Jekyll configuration
_sass/_themes.scss	Typography and theme variables
_includes/head/custom.html	Custom head snippets (font imports)

Research Resources

Resource	URL	Access
VSF-Med project page	https://unhsaillab.github.io/VSF-Med/	Public
Primary research repo	https://github.com/UNHSAILLab/medical-vlm-robustness	Private (grant on request)
Medical VQA dataset	https://huggingface.co/datasets/saillab/medical-vqa-robustness-analysis	Public
PSF-Med dataset	https://huggingface.co/datasets/saillab/psf-med	Public
Experiment tracking (W&B)	https://wandb.ai/bineshkumar-saillab-unh/med-vlm-robustness	Gated (request access)

Publication Types

Publications use the pub_type field in frontmatter:

pub_type	Category
manuscripts	Journal Articles and Preprints
conferences	Conference Papers
patents	Patents