CAIA Center Dev Log 004

The Postbar—Navigation, Iteration, and AI Collaboration

The Navigation Challenge

When setting up CAIA Center, one thing quickly became clear: navigation needed improvement. The default sidebar structure was useful, but it lacked category-level awareness—readers navigating through posts didn’t have an easy way to jump between related topics. first we wanted breadcrumbs to do the job for us, but since they are placed at the contents head, they are cumbersome when in lower content areas. 

Our goals:

• Keep navigation intuitive and seamless.
• Ensure mobile-friendliness without cluttering the UI.
• Avoid dependencies on Jekyll plugins, since GitHub Pages has limitations.
• Make it category-aware → Readers should always know where they - are and have direct access to related posts.

The Postbar Concept

To address this, we built a dynamic postbar, positioned above the author box, with the following features:

✅ Backlink to the category → Users can easily return to the overview.   ✅ Displays latest posts within the same category → Context-aware navigation.   ✅ Sidebar-inspired design → Feels native to Minimal Mistakes.
✅ Collapsible on mobile → Saves space without losing functionality.
✅ Works within Jekyll’s ecosystem → No additional plugins required.  

Iteration & AI Collaboration

How We Developed It
We started with a basic concept—a postbar that simply fetched posts from the same category. However, early iterations were too rigid, and making it work dynamically across different sections of the site required refining the approach. So before memory bloats the cat to bite its tail, we took our so-far findings to a fresh pair of eyes.

AI Engineering Assistance (DeepThink)

We turned to DeepThink AI for precision coding. Since a lot was known already we could prompt a lot more precise, and after just three iterations, we had:

A fully functional postbar.

Minimal bugs, with each iteration adding refinements rather than overhauls. A modular structure that adapts to different categories dynamically.
Challenges & Refinements
Ensuring the category detection worked across all posts.
Avoiding excess queries while still keeping it lightweight.
Ensuring smooth collapsing behavior on mobile.
Making it visually cohesive with the existing Minimal Mistakes layout.
After iterating efficiently, we arrived at a solution that met our needs without unnecessary complexity.

4️⃣ What’s Next?

While the postbar is now functional, we see room for further refinement:

➡ Extending it to pages: Right now, it only works with posts. Should it also work on category overview pages?
➡ Unifying it with breadcrumbs: Can we merge the backlink-fetching mechanism?
➡ Potential contribution to Minimal Mistakes: If further refined, could this be a valuable addition to the theme?

This marks another step forward in CAIA Center’s structured evolution. Stay tuned for Dev Log 005, where we tackle breadcrumbs! 🚀