Colophon

This book was produced with Quarto, typeset in Source Serif 4, with code blocks set in JetBrains Mono. The examples target a recent Claude, ChatGPT, or comparable large language model interface and a recent R installation.

The book is hosted at https://ai-for-research.rgtlab.org on Netlify, with continuous deployment via GitHub Actions from the rgt47/ai-for-research repository on every push to main.

The cover is generated procedurally by images/build-cover.R from a watercolor gradient anchored on #6a4c93 (the volume’s brand violet) and overlaid with Avenir typography. Re-running the script regenerates the cover; the procedural approach makes the cover reproducible and editable in version control rather than dependent on a one-shot image-generation step.

Each day chapter carries three further figures: an opening photograph introducing the day as a whole, a mid-lecture photograph tied to one specific subsection, and a worked-example photograph tied to that day’s scenario. Unlike the cover, these 15 images are AI-generated (via the gemini-image-generator tool, gemini-3-pro-image-preview, 2026-08-31), not scripted R graphics; each depicts a concrete physical object or scene chosen as a metaphor for the content beside it (for example, a magnifying glass dissolving a library card’s printed lines into a smudge, beside the section on recognizing a fabricated citation). Every image’s full generation prompt is recorded in images/README.md, and the metaphor is stated explicitly in the italic caption beneath each image in the text, so nothing about what a figure is meant to evoke is left for the reader to guess. In keeping with the AI-use disclosure practice this book itself teaches in Day 4 and Day 5, this paragraph is that disclosure: the prose, code, and citations in this book are not AI-generated, but these 15 illustrations are, and the difference is stated here rather than left unstated.

Last rendered: see the build timestamp on the homepage.