Xuhan Huang

Xuhan Huang

Incoming MPhil student in Computer Science.

Xuhan Huang Personal Website Redesign Plan

Xuhan Huang Personal Website Redesign Plan

Status: implemented locally; awaiting review

Working branch: site-redesign

Verification: production Jekyll build and four-page redesign audit passed on 2026-08-16

Remote policy: do not push or deploy until explicit user approval

1. Objective

Redesign the public-facing personal website as a coherent, low-key academic site with a distinct visual identity. Preserve the current Jekyll repository, content history, research assets, and stable URLs where practical; replace the public layouts and design system rather than rewriting the technical stack from scratch.

The intended impression is:

  • personal and memorable to peers and early-career researchers;
  • restrained and credible to senior researchers;
  • research-first, without presenting the author as more senior than the current career stage;
  • visually warm and individual, without turning the site into a game, terminal, or portfolio gimmick.

2. Scope

In scope

  • A new shared visual system and public-page layout.
  • A fully redesigned Home page.
  • A redesigned Research page.
  • A unified Teaching page.
  • A restyled CV landing page with the existing PDF retained.
  • Shared navigation, footer, responsive behavior, typography, link components, and accessibility states.
  • Migration of approved research figures and the SWD animation into repository-owned assets.
  • Replacement of placeholder links with verified real links.

Out of scope

  • Replacing Jekyll with another framework.
  • Rewriting factual CV or publication content without evidence.
  • Adding the abandoned self-play project.
  • Adding decorative references to Snoopy or Minions solely for personality.
  • Rebuilding legacy archive, talk, portfolio, and blog collections unless they become necessary for a public route.
  • Pushing, merging, or deploying before local approval.

3. Approved Design Direction

3.1 Visual character

  • Low-key editorial academic style.
  • Warm off-white page background with restrained dark green accents inspired by the SWD blog palette.
  • Thin separators only where they materially clarify page structure.
  • No oversized name hero and no manifesto-style first screen.
  • No heavy cards, gradients, large shadows, or saturated call-to-action buttons.

3.2 Typography

Use Newsreader only for all visible site text. Use size, weight, color, spacing, and italics to create hierarchy instead of switching type families.

  • Weight 400: body copy, authors, affiliation, ordinary links, and metadata.
  • Weight 500: name, navigation, publication titles, publication summaries, Teaching item titles, and action-label text.
  • Weight 600: section labels, the author’s name inside author lists, venues, and Email: / Links: labels.
  • Italic: equal-contribution notes and occasional secondary annotations only.
  • Uppercase plus letter spacing: small structural labels such as ABOUT, RECENT WORK, and TEACHING.
  • Use the Newsreader variable font with optical sizing and self-host it in the repository for production.
  • Icons embedded in action labels and fonts inside original research figures do not count as additional site typography.

3.3 Shared navigation

  • Left: Xuhan Huang in full; do not abbreviate it to XH.
  • Right: Home, Research, Teaching, CV.
  • Keep the navigation compact and typographically consistent with the rest of the site.
  • Preserve a clear active state without heavy underlines or filled tabs.

4. Page Specifications

4.1 Home

Identity and About

  • Small circular portrait, approximately 140 px on desktop and smaller on mobile.
  • Identity block under or beside the portrait:
    • Xuhan Huang
    • Incoming MPhil in Computer Science
    • CUHK-Shenzhen

  • About copy:

    I am an incoming MPhil student in Computer Science at CUHK-Shenzhen. I completed my undergraduate studies in Mathematics there, where I was advised by Professors Benyou Wang and Zhongxiang Dai. I am currently mentored by Professor Jie Fu.

    My research interests lie broadly in AI safety, especially mechanistic understanding and scalable formal reasoning and verification. I am interested in developing AI systems whose behavior can be better understood, evaluated, and verified.

  • Contact formatting:
    • Email: in weight 600, followed by the visible and clickable address xuhanhuang@link.cuhk.edu.cn in weight 400.
    • Links: in weight 600, followed by Google Scholar | GitHub in weight 400.
    • No default underline under the email.
    • No icons in the contact block.
    • No divider between About and Email, and no divider directly below Links.

Recent Work

Use the label Recent Work, not Selected Publications.

The four featured entries are:

  1. Sparse Weight Decomposition for Efficient Circuit Extraction.
  2. Re:Form—Reducing Human Annotations in Scalable Formal Software Verification with RL in LLMs: A Preliminary Study on Dafny.
  3. Federated Linear Dueling Bandits.
  4. LLMs for Mathematical Modeling: Towards Bridging the Gap between Natural and Mathematical Languages.

Author rules:

  • Keep complete author lists for SWD, FLDB, and MAMO.

  • For Re:Form, preserve all seven equal-contribution authors and then shorten the remaining list:

    Chuanhao Yan*, Fengdi Che*, Xuhan Huang*, Xu Xu*, Xin Li*, Yizhi Li*, Xingwei Qu*, et al.

  • Bold Xuhan Huang within author lists.
  • Preserve the * Equal contribution. note.
  • The Research page will contain the complete Re:Form author list.

Action links:

  • Use compact soft labels for Paper, Code, and Blog.
  • Include a small document icon for Paper, a code icon for Code, and a restrained external/article icon for Blog.
  • Follow the light Mia Tang treatment: no visible outline border, small padding, subtle rounding, muted text/icon color, and an extremely light shadow that strengthens slightly on hover.
  • The full label area must be clickable; do not use icon-only controls.
  • SWD: reuse the original animated hero from /mnt/ydao/share/swd_hf_space; retain its internal title, remove replay UI, and fit it naturally inside the publication figure area.
  • Re:Form: use /mnt/ydao/xuhan/others/reform_rl.png; do not add the previous blue outer border or extra Section 2.4 text.
  • FLDB: use the cover derived from the original Draw.io source, not a newly invented diagram. Source files:
    • /mnt/ydao/xuhan/others/fldb_new.drawio
    • /mnt/ydao/xuhan/others/fldb_homepage_cover.drawio
    • /mnt/ydao/xuhan/others/fldb_homepage_cover.svg
    • /mnt/ydao/xuhan/others/fldb_homepage_cover.png
  • MAMO: use /mnt/ydao/xuhan/others/mamo_pipeline.png.
  • Preserve editable/source provenance where available.
  • Copy production assets into repository-owned paths; production pages must not reference /tmp, /mnt/ydao/share, or other external workspace paths.

Remaining Home content

  • More Research contains formal publication titles, authors, venues, and real links.
  • Keep complete author names in More Research.
  • Right rail contains Teaching and a short Off the clock note.
  • Teaching entries point to the same unified Teaching page.
  • Do not add self-play.

4.2 Research

The page should present one safety objective and two current research focuses rather than three overlapping peer categories.

Overall objective:

  • AI safety.

Current focuses:

  1. Mechanistic Understanding for AI Safety.
  2. Scalable Formal Reasoning and Verification.

The lower section contains the complete research record with:

  • formal titles;
  • complete author lists;
  • equal-contribution markers;
  • venues and status;
  • verified Paper, Code, Project, Blog, or Dataset links where available;
  • concise summaries only when they help readers understand the contribution.

Do not add self-play. Avoid describing MAMO as a separate non-safety identity bucket; place it according to its role in scalable formal reasoning and verifiable feedback.

4.3 Teaching

  • Keep a single /teaching/ page.
  • The Home-page Teaching entries all link to this page.
  • Include:
    • Honours ODE — Teaching Fellow, Fall 2024.
    • Honours Calculus — Teaching Fellow, Spring 2024.
    • Student Seminars — PPO and veRL (2025), Real Analysis (2023).
  • Keep descriptions concise; do not create one page for each one-sentence item.
  • Use the same typography, navigation, width, and footer as Home and Research.

4.4 CV

  • Preserve the existing CV facts and PDF unless a newer user-provided version is available.
  • Current repository PDF: files/Xuhan_Huang_CV_20260815.pdf, compiled from the 2026-08-15 source snapshot in /mnt/ydao/xuhan/others/6925bc272dda07b08e4dddc6.
  • Restyle the CV landing page with the new shared layout.
  • Keep a clear PDF download/view link.
  • Do not silently reconcile inconsistent major labels or dates; verify them before changing factual content.

5. Implementation Stages

Stage 0 — Plan and guardrails

Deliverables:

  • Local branch site-redesign.
  • This REDESIGN_PLAN.md document.
  • Confirmed no-push/no-deploy rule.

Acceptance:

  • Plan records the approved visual and content decisions.
  • Existing master and origin/master remain untouched.

Stage 1 — Shared foundation

Deliverables:

  • Shared base layout and page shell.
  • Shared navigation and footer includes.
  • Design tokens for colors, spacing, widths, and type hierarchy.
  • Self-hosted Newsreader variable font and fallbacks.
  • Responsive base styles and focus states.

Acceptance:

  • A minimal test page builds through Jekyll.
  • Desktop and mobile navigation work without overflow.
  • No default academicpages author sidebar appears on redesigned routes.

Stage 2 — Home

Deliverables:

  • Approved Home design implemented in Jekyll.
  • Repository-owned figure assets and SWD animation.
  • Verified real links.

Acceptance:

  • Matches the approved temporary prototype at desktop and mobile sizes.
  • No placeholder # links.
  • No references to temporary/external filesystem paths.
  • Animation respects prefers-reduced-motion.

Stage 3 — Research

Deliverables:

  • Research framing and two focus areas.
  • Complete bibliographic research list.

Acceptance:

  • Full author lists and contribution markers are correct.
  • Work placement does not create overlapping or misleading research categories.
  • Self-play is absent.

Stage 4 — Teaching and CV

Deliverables:

  • Unified Teaching page.
  • Restyled CV landing page.

Acceptance:

  • All Home Teaching links resolve to /teaching/.
  • CV content remains evidence-grounded and PDF access works.

Stage 5 — Verification

Checks:

  • Production Jekyll build.
  • Internal-route and external-link audit.
  • Desktop and mobile screenshots.
  • Keyboard and focus behavior.
  • Image alt text and meaningful labels.
  • Reduced-motion behavior.
  • Font and asset loading.
  • Git status review for unrelated changes.

Acceptance:

  • Build succeeds without newly introduced warnings or broken routes.
  • No placeholder or machine-local paths remain.
  • Public pages are usable at desktop and mobile widths.

Stage 6 — Local review

  • Serve the complete redesign locally.
  • Review Home, Research, Teaching, and CV page by page.
  • Apply requested revisions locally.

Stage 7 — Finalization and deployment gate

  • Only after explicit user approval:
    • create final local commits;
    • discuss merge strategy;
    • push if authorized;
    • deploy if authorized.

Local approval does not imply permission to push or deploy.

6. Content and Link Audit

Before production implementation, verify:

  • paper and code URLs for every featured and More Research entry;
  • the canonical SWD Blog URL;
  • Google Scholar and GitHub profile URLs;
  • venue names and publication status;
  • the latest intended CV PDF;
  • exact author spelling, order, and equal-contribution markers;
  • advisor links if names become clickable.

Existing repository content and PDFs are evidence sources, not automatically current truth. Do not invent missing URLs or facts.

7. Safety, History, and Rollback

  • Work only on site-redesign until approval.
  • Preserve unrelated files and any future user changes.
  • Do not use destructive Git operations.
  • Keep the original Draw.io asset and other editable sources alongside derived web exports where practical.
  • The remote version remains the rollback baseline until the user approves a deployment.
  • Do not push, merge, or deploy without a separate explicit instruction.

8. Process Note

This document serves as the lightweight implementation specification for the redesign. OpenSpec is not introduced at Stage 0 because the approved prototype and this repository-local plan provide sufficient scope control. Reconsider a heavier specification workflow only if the site expands into a multi-contributor or substantially more complex project.