Tutorial 3: Customising Your Book - Neuromatch Course Template

Changing the title and metadata¶

Edit myst.yml — these fields appear in the browser tab, sidebar, and Open Graph metadata when the book is published:

project:
  title: Computational Neuroscience 2027
  description: An introduction to modelling the brain
  authors:
    - name: Your Name
      github: your-github-username
  github: https://github.com/your-org/your-course-repo

Adding a logo¶

Place your logo file in _static/ and reference it in myst.yml:

site:
  options:
    logo: _static/your_logo.png

SVG and PNG both work. The logo appears in the top-left of the sidebar.

Custom CSS¶

Edit _static/custom.css — it is already wired into the book via myst.yml. Use it to override colours, fonts, or spacing:

/* Change the primary colour */
:root {
  --color-primary: #FF6B6B;
}

/* Style exercise admonitions */
.admonition.tip {
  border-left-color: #4ECDC4;
}

Adding a Binder badge¶

Show a persistent Binder launch badge on every page:

project:
  binder: https://mybinder.org/v2/gh/your-org/your-repo/HEAD

Enabling download buttons¶

Let students download pages as PDF or Jupyter notebook:

site:
  options:
    downloads: true

Choosing a different theme¶

MyST uses book-theme by default. To list available themes:

myst templates list --site

Then set it in myst.yml:

site:
  template: book-theme