CARWatch

CARWatch is an open-source framework to support objective and low-cost assessment of cortisol samples in real-world, unsupervised environments. It is especially suitable for cortisol awakening response (CAR) research, but not limited to this application.

For local authoring, the markdown files in docs/ remain normal UTF-8 source files. During the build, scripts/prepare_build_docs.py creates a temporary normalized copy in .build/docs before MinimalDoc runs. This avoids a current MinimalDoc search-index issue with non-ASCII characters while keeping the editable source files clean.

Project Website

The project overview, platform links, publication highlight, and privacy-policy page are hosted as a GitHub Pages site generated from the source files in docs/.

This site uses MinimalDoc as its static site generator and theme.

MinimalDoc also generates llms.txt and related machine-readable companion files. These can be useful for AI-assisted browsing or downstream tooling.

Once GitHub Pages is enabled to use GitHub Actions, the public site will be available at:

https://carwatch-tools.github.io/

For local editing, update the source files in docs/, especially:

• docs/config.yaml
• docs/index.md
• docs/overview.md
• docs/components.md
• docs/publications.md
• docs/privacy.md
• docs/TOC.md
• docs/brand/ for site logo and favicon assets
• docs/site.webmanifest for the web app/browser icon manifest
• scripts/postprocess_landing.py as the build-time entry point for HTML postprocessing
• scripts/postprocess_homepage.py for homepage-specific layout and section rendering
• scripts/postprocess_shared.py for shared branding, content-page chrome, and common HTML helpers

The GitHub Pages deployment workflow is defined in .github/workflows/docs.yml.

Local Preview

Requirements

Local development requires:

• Go installed and available on PATH
• network access if MinimalDoc is not already available locally

The GitHub Actions deployment workflow does not depend on any local /tmp paths. It installs MinimalDoc during CI and builds the site independently of your machine.

First-Time Setup

Bootstrap the MinimalDoc binary with:

make install

This installs MinimalDoc into the repo-local path .tools/bin/minimaldoc.

If make install fails, check your setup with:

make doctor

Build the site locally with:

make

Serve the built site and open it in your browser with:

make view

Build without serving with:

make build

If you want to run the server without opening the browser:

make serve

The server runs in the foreground until you stop it with Ctrl+C.

To use a different port temporarily:

make serve PORT=4321
make view PORT=4321

To remove local build output:

make clean

To remove both local build output and the repo-local MinimalDoc binary:

make clean-all

Notes

• Local build output is written to .build/site.
• The local MinimalDoc binary is stored in .tools/bin/minimaldoc.
• The build pipeline applies a small post-processing step to generated HTML so the homepage and content pages can use the project-specific layout and branding that MinimalDoc does not expose through config alone.
• Brand assets from docs/brand/ and docs/site.webmanifest are copied into the built site during local and CI builds.
• The build step clears the output directory first so deleted pages are not accidentally kept in the generated site.
• If .tools/bin/minimaldoc is missing, make, make build, make serve, and make view will install it automatically when Go is available.
• The first local install may take a moment because Go downloads the MinimalDoc module and its dependencies.
• If you are offline and do not already have a working minimaldoc binary, local installation will fail.
• In that case, reconnect to the network and run make install.
• make only builds the site. It does not start the server.
• make view starts a local server, opens the browser, and should stop the server again when you press Ctrl+C in that terminal.
• If make serve reports that the port is already in use, check for an existing listener with:

lsof -nP -iTCP:4173 -sTCP:LISTEN

Stop the old process and then run make serve again.

make clean removes only generated site output in .build/.

make clean-all removes both .build/ and .tools/.

Current Scope

The GitHub Pages site currently provides:

• a landing page for the CARWatch project
• links for the Android and iOS apps, the Study Manager, project pages, publications, and related resources
• a formal privacy-policy page with placeholder content for app-store compliance work

Publication

If you use CARWatch in your work, please cite:

Richer, R., Abel, L., Küderle, A., Eskofier, B. M., & Rohleder, N. (2023). CARWatch – A smartphone application for
improving the accuracy of cortisol awakening response sampling. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 151, 106073.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2023.106073

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for details.