Augustine Nguyen

Augustine Nguyen

Data Scientist working at the intersection of Financial Risk and Growth Analytics. Based in Republic of Korea.

Session Context: augustine0890.github.io

Session Context: augustine0890.github.io

LLM onboarding document for Augustine Nguyen’s portfolio site. Covers architecture, constraints, decisions, and change history. Read this before implementing any feature.

Last updated: 2026-04-27.

Project overview

Who: Augustine Nguyen — Data Scientist, 9 years, FPT Software Korea. Domains: credit risk, fraud detection, growth analytics, generative AI, computer vision.

Site purpose: Professional portfolio for hiring managers / recruiters evaluating DS or ML engineering roles. Foregrounds production impact (scale numbers, hackathon wins) over academic outputs.

Live URL: https://augustine0890.github.io

Success criteria: Loads fast, correct on mobile/desktop, degrades without JS, signals quantitative rigor, maintainable by editing Markdown only, stays on GitHub Pages free tier.

Non-goals: Blog, comments, talks, publications, multi-author support.

Architecture

Stack: Jekyll static site, academicpages theme fork, GitHub Pages deployment. Upstream theme is not tracked as a Git remote — all files are fully owned.

Key directories:

  • _pages/ — 4 pages: about.md (/), cv.md (/cv/), portfolio.html (/portfolio/), 404.md
  • _portfolio/ — 7 project files (01-aisol.md … 07-investment-securities.md), numeric prefix controls display order
  • _sass/ — all styling (see Styling section below)
  • _data/navigation.yml — 3 nav items: About, Projects, CV
  • assets/css/main.scss — SCSS entry point; import order is load-bearing
  • assets/js/main.min.js — committed compiled bundle; rebuild only if JS plugins change
  • files/ — static downloadable assets (e.g. augustine-nguyen-cv.pdf)
  • _config.yml — single source of truth for metadata, theme, plugins

Data flow: GitHub push → GitHub Pages runs Jekyll → compiles SCSS + Liquid → serves static files. No runtime processing.

Constraints (hard rules — do not break)

  1. GitHub Pages only. Only gems on the github-pages whitelist are usable. Gemfile pins github-pages as primary dependency.
  2. SCSS import order in main.scss is load-bearing.
    • Theme files (_latex_light.scss) must be imported before all layout files.
    • _latex_extras.scss must be imported last.
    • Breaking this order causes silent visual regressions.
  3. No server-side logic. Purely static. Dynamic behavior must be client-side JS or foregone.
  4. No emoji in content. Emoji clash with the LaTeX typographic register. All pages and portfolio files are emoji-free. jemoji plugin is installed but is effectively a no-op.
  5. Keep files/augustine-nguyen-cv.pdf filename stable. The CV download button points to this path; renaming breaks the public URL.
  6. Do not re-merge portfolio files 06 and 07. 06-qaqc-dashboard.md (Java/Spring Boot/Chart.js) and 07-investment-securities.md (Oracle→EDB SQL migration) are distinct projects and must stay separate.

Styling system

Active theme: site_theme: "latex" in _config.yml.

Files:

  • _sass/_themes.scss — shared variables (font stacks, type scale, breakpoints). Imported first.
  • _sass/theme/_latex_light.scss — light palette, font overrides ($sans-serif, $sans-serif-narrow, $global-font-family all set to EB Garamond stack). Imported second.
  • _sass/theme/_latex_dark.scss — dark palette via html[data-theme="dark"] selector (JS toggle, not OS media query).
  • _sass/layout/_latex_extras.scss — custom academic layer. Imported last. Contains: justified body text, small-caps headings with red rule, booktabs tables, theorem environments, sidebar/masthead refinements, print stylesheet, .cv-download-btn styles.
  • _sass/layout/*.scss — upstream component files (base, masthead, sidebar, tables, buttons, etc.)

Key values:

  • Background: #fffff8 (cream paper)
  • Accent: #8b1a1a (academic deep red)
  • Body font: EB Garamond (Google Fonts)
  • Mono font: JetBrains Mono (Google Fonts)
  • Google Fonts loaded in _includes/head.html; degrades to system serif if unavailable

Dark mode: JS sets data-theme="dark" on <html>. CSS selector is html[data-theme="dark"], not @media (prefers-color-scheme: dark).

Booktabs table fix: _latex_extras.scss opens its table override with border: none before setting border-top/border-bottom, because the upstream _tables.scss uses the border shorthand which sets all four sides and longhands alone do not clear it.

Content facts (do not change without confirmation)

Scale claims (load-bearing for credibility):

  • ABACUS credit scoring: 10M+ users
  • AZEN Global database: 5B+ records
  • Credit scoring accuracy lift: +3%

Positioning: Tri-domain — financial risk · growth analytics · computer vision. Causal inference background (Mendelian Randomization, IV, DiD) is a differentiator; preserve it.

Hackathon: FPT AI Hackathon 3 champion, 2025 (AISOL project, Japanese enterprise RAG on Qdrant/Gemini/Qwen). Most prominent credential — keep it featured on About and CV.

CV download: Button is in _pages/cv.md after the Personal Details section. Links to /files/augustine-nguyen-cv.pdf with download attribute. Button hidden from print via @media print in _latex_extras.scss.

Languages on CV: English (fluent), Vietnamese (native). Do not add Korean.

Credentials section (not “Certifications”) — deliberate vocabulary choice.

Navigation: 3 items only (About, Projects, CV). Do not add Publications, Talks, Teaching, or Blog.

Local development

Tested Ruby version: 3.3.x — use Ruby+Devkit 3.3.x (x64) from rubyinstaller.org.

  • Ruby 4.x: too new (breaks Jekyll 3.9 — removed String#tainted?)
  • Ruby 2.x: too old for current gem dependencies

Windows setup:

# Run once after RubyInstaller — choose option 3 (MSYS2 + MINGW toolchain)
ridk install

gem install bundler
bundle install
bundle exec jekyll serve -l -H localhost

macOS setup:

brew install ruby@3.3
# Add to ~/.zshrc:
export PATH="/opt/homebrew/opt/ruby@3.3/bin:$PATH"
export GEM_HOME="$HOME/.gem/ruby/3.3.0"
export PATH="$GEM_HOME/bin:$PATH"
source ~/.zshrc
gem install bundler && bundle install
bundle exec jekyll serve -l -H localhost

Windows-specific gems in Gemfile (already committed, fixes startup errors):

  • tzinfo-data — required on Windows; Linux/macOS have system zoneinfo
  • wdm — faster file-watching on Windows
  • faraday-retry — suppresses informational warning from older gems

Site: http://localhost:4000 — live reload enabled with -l flag.

JS bundle: assets/js/main.min.js is committed. Rebuild only if JS plugins change: npm install && npm run build:js.

Deploy: Push to main → GitHub Pages rebuilds automatically (1–3 min).

Known gotchas

  • SCSS import order — see Constraints §2 above. Silent failure if broken.
  • Portfolio file URLs — renaming _portfolio/ files changes their URLs. If external links exist, do not rename.
  • .github/workflows/ — contains a dead “Scrape Talk Locations” workflow (geocodes _talks/). Neither _talks/ nor talks/ exist. Workflow never fires; delete it in a future cleanup.
  • Profile image — _config.yml sets avatar: "profile.png" → resolves to images/profile.png. Missing image degrades silently (no photo shown).
  • Analytics — analytics.provider: "false" in _config.yml. Not connected. Adding requires only setting provider + tracking ID in _config.yml.

Open questions

  • Add analytics? (Google Analytics or Plausible — one-line config change)
  • Add custom domain? (update url in _config.yml + add CNAME file)
  • Add favicon? (upstream template may include placeholders in images/)

Change history

2026-04-24 — Site created + LaTeX theme

Cold start: site built from academicpages fork. Two commits: content skeleton, then LaTeX redesign.

LaTeX theme decisions (permanent):

  • New _latex_light.scss + _latex_dark.scss instead of modifying upstream air theme files — keeps rollback clean (change one line in _config.yml)
  • Override $sans-serif and $sans-serif-narrow in theme file (not just $global-font-family) so sidebar and masthead also use EB Garamond
  • EB Garamond over Computer Modern web font — better CDN, active maintenance, perceptually equivalent

CSS bugs fixed at launch:

  1. Booktabs table — upstream border shorthand survived partial longhand override. Fix: add border: none first in the override block.
  2. Dark mode — initial _latex_dark.scss used @media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) but JS toggle writes data-theme="dark" on <html>. Fix: switch to html[data-theme="dark"] selector.

2026-04-26 — CV refresh + cross-tab consistency

CV updates (_pages/cv.md):

  • Added Computer Vision as a third domain (YOLO/SSD, DeepSORT/ByteTrack/StrongSORT, TensorRT, Jetson/ROS 2)
  • Removed Korean from languages (do not re-add)
  • Added Thompson Sampling and Kaplan-Meier/Cox PH/AFT to skills
  • Added Twitter to contact line
  • Added tagline blockquote

Cross-tab alignment (all tabs aligned against GitHub profile README as source of truth):

  • About: added tagline blockquote, expanded Core Toolkit to 11 rows, added Twitter/LinkedIn/GitHub contact
  • Portfolio AISOL title: now leads with “Champion, FPT AI Hackathon 3 (2025)”
  • Split 06-qaqc-dashboard.md and 07-investment-securities.md — previously merged incorrectly; must stay separate (see Constraints §6)
  • Renamed “Certifications” → “Credentials” site-wide

2026-04-27 — CV download button + Windows dev setup

CV download button (complete, live-ready):

  • files/augustine-nguyen-cv.pdf — static PDF committed to repo
  • _pages/cv.md — <a href="/files/augustine-nguyen-cv.pdf" download class="cv-download-btn">Download CV (PDF)</a> placed after Personal Details section
  • _sass/layout/_latex_extras.scss — .cv-download-btn block: academic-red (#8b1a1a) button + @media print { display: none }
  • PDF is auto-regenerated on every push via .github/workflows/generate-cv-pdf.yml — no manual replacement needed

GitHub Actions PDF auto-generation:

  • Workflow: .github/workflows/generate-cv-pdf.yml
  • Triggers: push to main when _pages/cv.md, _sass/**, _layouts/**, or _includes/** change; also workflow_dispatch for manual runs
  • Process: Ruby 3.3 + bundle exec jekyll build → Python HTTP server on port 4000 → Puppeteer (networkidle2, print media type, A4) → commits files/augustine-nguyen-cv.pdf back with [skip ci] to prevent re-triggering
  • Script: .github/scripts/generate-cv-pdf.js (Puppeteer, --no-sandbox for CI)
  • The [skip ci] tag on the auto-commit prevents an infinite loop since the commit only touches files/

Windows dev environment fixed:

  • Added tzinfo-data, wdm, faraday-retry to Gemfile (Windows platform gems)
  • README.md updated with full Windows + macOS install guides including Ruby 3.3 requirement and ridk install option-3 step