docs: Add session handoff notes for syllabus and demos fixes

Author: jeremymanning

notes/2026-01-04-session-handoff.md

@@ -0,0 +1,139 @@
+# Session Handoff - January 4, 2026
+
+**Status:** Ready to implement
+**Priority:** High
+**Mode:** ultrawork (ulw)
+
+## Tasks To Complete
+
+### 1. Syllabus Table Fixes
+**File:** `admin/syllabus.md` → regenerate `syllabus/index.html`
+
+**Problems:**
+- Columns are mismatched in the detailed schedule tables
+- X-hour lectures aren't numbered sequentially
+
+**Required fixes:**
+- Columns should be: **Day | Lecture | Link to slides | Materials**
+- Materials column should contain links to readings + assignments
+- X-hour lectures should be numbered sequentially like all other lectures:
+  - Week 1: Lectures 1, 2, 3, 4 (not "Lecture 1, 2, X-hour, 3")
+  - Week 2: Lectures 5, 6, 7, 8
+  - And so on...
+
+**Current state (from syllabus.md lines 153-158):**
+```markdown
+| Day | Lecture | Topics | Materials |
+|-----|---------|--------|-----------|
+| Mon Jan 5 | Lecture 1 | Course Introduction... | [readings] |
+| Wed Jan 7 | Lecture 2 | Pattern Matching... | [readings] |
+| Thu Jan 8 | X-hour 1 | ELIZA Deep Dive | Start Assignment 1 |
+| Fri Jan 9 | Lecture 3 | ELIZA Implementation... | [readings], **Assignment 1 Released** |
+```
+
+**Should become:**
+```markdown
+| Day | Lecture | Link to slides | Materials |
+|-----|---------|----------------|-----------|
+| Mon Jan 5 | Lecture 1 | [Slides](../slides/week1/lecture1.html) | [Fedorenko et al.](url), [Schrimpf et al.](url) |
+| Wed Jan 7 | Lecture 2 | [Slides](../slides/week1/lecture2.html) | [Weizenbaum (1966)](url) |
+| Thu Jan 8 | Lecture 3 | [Slides](../slides/week1/lecture3.html) | Start Assignment 1 |
+| Fri Jan 9 | Lecture 4 | [Slides](../slides/week1/lecture4.html) | [Natale (2021)](url), **Assignment 1 Released** |
+```
+
+After editing, run: `python scripts/build-pages.py`
+
+---
+
+### 2. Remove Keyword Filtering from Demos Page
+**File:** `demos/index.html`
+
+**Problem:** The "Filter by Topic" keyword buttons at the top aren't useful.
+
+**Required changes:**
+1. Remove the entire `.tag-browser` section (lines 456-459):
+   ```html
+   <div class="tag-browser">
+       <div class="tag-browser-title">Filter by Topic</div>
+       <div class="tag-list" id="tagList"></div>
+   </div>
+   ```
+
+2. Remove `data-tags` attributes from demo cards (they're on each `.demo-card`)
+
+3. Remove the `.demo-tags` display inside each card (the visible tag pills)
+
+4. Update the JavaScript to:
+   - Remove `collectAllTags()`, `populateTagBrowser()`, `toggleTag()` functions
+   - Remove tag-related variables (`activeTag`, tag filtering logic)
+   - Keep search functionality but make it search:
+     - Card title
+     - Card description
+     - **Demo webpage content** (need to fetch/index demo README.md or index.html content)
+
+5. Remove all `.tag-*` CSS styles
+
+**Search enhancement idea:** Could pre-build a search index from demo README.md files, or fetch on page load.
+
+---
+
+### 3. Add Missing Lecture Links to All Demos
+**File:** `demos/index.html`
+
+**Problem:** Many demos are missing "Related Lectures" links. Every demo should have at least one.
+
+**Current state - demos WITH lecture links:**
+- ELIZA: Lectures 2, 3
+- Tokenization: Lecture 6
+- Word Embeddings: Lectures 11, 12
+- Attention: Lecture 16
+- Transformer: Lecture 17
+
+**Demos MISSING lecture links (need to add):**
+- Chatbot Evolution → Lectures 2, 3, 4 (pattern matching, ELIZA)
+- GPT Playground → Lectures 18, 19, 20 (GPT architecture)
+- RAG System → Lecture 21 (RAG)
+- Topic Modeling → Lectures 7, 8 (LSA, LDA, embeddings)
+- Sentiment Analysis → Lecture 6 (POS, sentiment)
+- POS Tagging → Lecture 6 (POS tagging)
+- Word Analogies → Lectures 8, 11 (Word2Vec, embeddings)
+- Semantic Search → Lectures 9, 21 (contextual embeddings, RAG)
+- BERT MLM → Lectures 15, 16 (BERT)
+- Embeddings Comparison → Lectures 7, 8, 9 (all embedding lectures)
+
+**Lecture-to-demo mapping (from syllabus):**
+| Lecture | Week | Topic | Related Demos |
+|---------|------|-------|---------------|
+| 1-4 | 1 | Intro, ELIZA | eliza, chatbot-evolution |
+| 5-6 | 2 | Tokenization, POS | tokenization, pos-tagging, sentiment |
+| 7-8 | 3 | LSA/LDA, Word2Vec | topic-modeling, embeddings, analogies |
+| 9-11 | 4 | Contextual embeddings, dim reduction | embeddings, embeddings-comparison, semantic-search |
+| 12-14 | 5 | Attention, Transformers | attention, transformer |
+| 15-17 | 6 | BERT | bert-mlm |
+| 18-20 | 7 | GPT | gpt-playground |
+| 21-23 | 9 | RAG, Ethics | rag |
+
+---
+
+## Files to Modify
+
+1. `admin/syllabus.md` - Fix table structure and lecture numbering
+2. `demos/index.html` - Remove keywords, add lecture links, enhance search
+3. Run `python scripts/build-pages.py` after syllabus changes
+
+## Commands
+
+```bash
+# After syllabus.md changes
+python scripts/build-pages.py
+
+# Verify generated HTML
+open syllabus/index.html
+open demos/index.html
+```
+
+## Previous Session Context
+
+- Just committed `0aa896f`: list parsing fix with nesting + checkboxes
+- All tests passing
+- build-pages.py now handles nested lists and checkboxes properly