run-it-journey

description	Build, run, and drive the IT-Journey Jekyll site. Use when asked to start IT-Journey, serve the site locally, preview a content change, take a screenshot of a page, smoke-test routes, or validate frontmatter/quests.
name	run-it-journey
source_file	SKILL.md
title	blocks until the server is actually serving (first run builds image + bundle; a few min)

IT-Journey is a large GitHub-Pages Jekyll site (quests, docs, notes, posts). You run it with Docker Compose (port 4002) and drive it with .claude/skills/run-it-journey/smoke.sh — a smoke harness that checks routes and screenshots pages with headless Google Chrome.

All paths below are relative to the repo root.

Authored and verified on macOS (Apple Silicon). The stock macOS system Ruby (2.6.10) cannot run this site — the jekyll-theme-zer0 gem (≥ 1.21) needs Ruby ≥ 3.2 — and there's no rbenv/brew Ruby here, so the native bundle exec jekyll serve path is a dead end. Docker is the path. The jekyll compose service builds from the repo Dockerfile (Ruby 3.2.3), which is why it works.

Prerequisites

• Docker Desktop, running. Verify: docker info >/dev/null && echo ok.
• Google Chrome (for screenshots), at the default macOS location /Applications/Google Chrome.app. Verify: "/Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome" --version. (smoke.sh skips screenshots with a warning if Chrome is absent; override with CHROME=/path/to/chrome.)

No apt-get/bundle install on the host — everything Ruby happens inside the container.

Setup

The compose jekyll service declares env_file: .env, so that file must exist (its API keys are optional and unused for serving):

cp .env.example .env

Run (agent path)

1. Start the server (first run is slow — see Gotchas):

docker compose up -d jekyll

The first start runs bundle install inside the container and then a full site build. Wait for Server running before driving it:

# blocks until the server is actually serving (first run builds image + bundle; a few min)
until docker compose logs jekyll 2>&1 | grep -q 'Server running'; do sleep 10; done
docker compose logs jekyll 2>&1 | grep -E 'done in|Server (address|running)'

2. Drive it — route checks + screenshots:

bash .claude/skills/run-it-journey/smoke.sh

Expected tail: seven HTTP 200 OK routes and ==> PASS. Screenshots land in /tmp/it-journey-shots/ (home.png, quests.png). Open them — a curl 200 with a blank body still "passes"; the PNG is the proof the site rendered.

smoke.sh knobs (all optional env / args):

invocation	what it does
bash .../smoke.sh	check / /home/ /quests/ /docs/ /notes/ /about/ /sitemap/, shoot / + /quests/
bash .../smoke.sh /quests/ /docs/	check just those routes
SHOTS="/ /docs/ /notes/" bash .../smoke.sh	screenshot a custom set
BASE_URL=http://localhost:4002 OUT_DIR=/tmp/x bash .../smoke.sh	override URL / output dir

Stop when done:

docker compose down          # stops + removes the container; keeps the
                             # bundle_cache + jekyll-cache volumes for next time

Run (human path)

make serve (→ bundle exec jekyll serve --config _config.yml,_config_dev.yml --livereload --port 4002) is the documented native workflow, but it needs a local Ruby ≥ 3.1 with gems bundled. On stock macOS system Ruby it fails with command not found: jekyll. Use the Docker path above unless you've set up a modern Ruby yourself.

Test

Lightweight syntax/sanity checks (host Ruby is fine — no gems needed):

make test          # ruby -c + bash -n on the statistics scripts → "All tests passed!"

Content / frontmatter validation (PRs here are mostly markdown). Host Python lacks pyyaml, so run it in a throwaway container — python:3.12-slim is the small base used here:

docker run --rm -v "$PWD":/app -w /app python:3.12-slim \
  sh -c "pip install -q pyyaml requests && python3 scripts/validation/frontmatter-validator.py pages/_about"
# → "✅ No files with errors!" and an SEO-score summary.
# Swap pages/_about for pages/ to validate everything, or pages/_quests for quests.

The repo also ships a quest-validator compose service for the same purpose (docker compose run --rm quest-validator), but it builds the heavier Dockerfile image (full bundle install + pip) on first use.

Gotchas

• First serve builds the Docker image (Ruby 3.2.3) + bundle, then the site — a few minutes, and :4002 refuses connections the whole time. The jekyll service now builds from the repo Dockerfile and runs natively (no amd64 emulation), so it's much faster than the old jekyll/jekyll image — the site build is ~30-40s. Until it finishes, curl localhost:4002 returns "Connection reset by peer." Don't kill it — watch for Server running in the logs.
• .env must exist or docker compose up jekyll errors. The service has env_file: .env; the repo only ships .env.example. cp .env.example .env.
• Don't fight the host Ruby. System Ruby 2.6.10 can't resolve the theme (needs ≥ 3.2) and there's no version manager installed. bundle exec jekyll … on the host gives command not found: jekyll. The whole point of Docker here is the Ruby 3.2.3 image built from the Dockerfile.
• A curl 200 is not proof of a render. Always open the screenshot PNG.
• macOS sometimes hands scripts a stripped PATH — bare curl/grep come back command not found. smoke.sh pins PATH defensively; in one-off shells use absolute paths like /usr/bin/curl.

Troubleshooting

• curl: (56) Recv failure: Connection reset by peer on :4002 — the server is still building. Wait for Server running (docker compose logs -f jekyll).
• Error: PyYAML is required but not installed when running a validator on the host — host Python has no deps. Use the python:3.12-slim docker command in the Test section.
• bundler: command not found: jekyll on the host — system Ruby has no gems installed and is too old anyway. Use Docker.
• docker compose up hangs at Generating... — it's not hung; that's the ~8 min build. Confirm forward progress with docker compose logs jekyll.