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[M4-8] Category theory: a concise course — project page #83

Description

@williamdemeo

ADR-002 promoted this to "a portfolio entry in its own right" under M4, and no issue was ever filed for it, so the decision has been sitting with nowhere to land since the content triage. #23 gave it a card on the index; this issue writes the page behind it.

ADR renumbered. The portfolio-shape ADR was numbered 006 and collided with #29's bibliography ADR, which had the earlier claim. It is now docs/adr/008-portfolio-shape.md (see #86). ADR-006 means the bibliography decision and is a different document.

Attribution is a correctness requirement

The course is coauthored with Venanzio Capretta and Charlotte Aten, and must carry that attribution wherever it appears — card, page, nav, social card, anywhere. ADR-002 calls this a correctness requirement rather than a courtesy, and it is repeated here because a project page is exactly the kind of place where a coauthor quietly becomes a footnote.

It is built out from course notes Capretta wrote for a short course at the Midlands Graduate School. That provenance goes on the page too; it is not the author's course with help, it is a joint work with a clear origin.

It unblocks a redirect

redirects.yml holds /books/ pending on "#56 and M4 -- the page splits; successor not yet chosen". ADR-002 split the legacy books page three ways: the two analysis collections merge into the exam corpus (#56), and the category theory course becomes this entry. One of those two successors now exists as a card and will exist as a page here, which is half of what /books/ needs to resolve.

Coordinate the final redirect target with #15 and #56 rather than deciding it unilaterally — one legacy URL, two successors, and #56 still has not settled the corpus's home.

What the page covers

This is the one expository entry in the portfolio, and it should be honest about being that rather than dressed up as research. What makes it worth a page: it is original teaching material at book length, it is public, and it is evidence of the ability to explain hard mathematics to people who do not already know it — which is a different and independently useful signal from the formalization work.

Tasks

  • Write the page per docs/projects/_template.md.
  • Attribute Capretta and Aten in the summary paragraph, not only in a footer.
  • Describe the course's scope, audience, and current state honestly (active, paused, or archived — whichever is true).
  • State the Midlands Graduate School provenance.
  • Verify https://categorytheory.gitlab.io resolves and is current. It has never been checked from a session that could reach it — the host is blocked by the sandbox egress allowlist, and it is the card's only link.
  • Swap the index card's title link to this page, per ADR-008 Decision 4.
  • Coordinate the /books/ redirect target with [M2-6] Build and verify the redirect map #15 and [M2-8] Build the qualifying-exam solutions into a first-class section #56.

Acceptance criteria

  • The page follows the M4-1 template.
  • Capretta and Aten are attributed on the page and on the card.
  • Every outbound link resolves, checked rather than assumed.
  • The entry reads as exposition, not as a research claim.
  • make check and make contrast-audit stay green.

Notes

Sixth on the index, not fifth, once #56 resolves — ADR-008 gives the exam corpus the fifth slot ahead of it, because the corpus is the author's own original solutions with an active formalization planned, where this is exposition built on existing notes. That ordering is decided; do not re-open it here.

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    contentMigrating, triaging, or restructuring existing content.milestone-4-portfolioMilestone 4: Portfolio of flagship work.writingRequires substantial new prose.

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