Citing, versions & links

Open resources are only useful if references to them hold. Alembic gives every document and figure a stable address, lets you insert once and reuse anywhere, and lets you freeze a term you can cite.

A link that doesn't break

A permalink stays fixed while the document movesA document carries a stable copper link. When the document is renamed or moved to another place in the course, the link keeps pointing to it — so a citation never breaks.
Rename or move a document and its permalink keeps pointing to it — the citation still works.

Every document and every asset has a permalink — a stable web address that belongs to it for good. Rename the file, reorganize your course, move a figure from one chapter to another: the permalink keeps pointing to the right thing. A colleague who cited your figure, or a student who bookmarked a page, never hits a dead link.

Insert once, reuse anywhere

Put a figure, structure, or plot in your Assets collection once, then insert it into any document. What gets placed is the asset’s permalink, so the same figure can appear in a study guide, a slide, and a practice set — and if you share the document, the figure travels with it and still renders, because the link is absolute, not a fragile relative path.

The same mechanism is how you cite: copy a document’s permalink and it resolves to exactly that resource, for anyone, without an account.

Snapshots — freeze a term you can cite

Teaching evolves, but sometimes you need to point at exactly what you taught. Take a named snapshot each term — “Fall 2026” — and Alembic freezes the whole course at that moment. You can cite it, compare it against a later version, or restore it. Your day-to-day edits keep moving forward; the snapshot stays put as a citable record.