Leverage permalinks with AJAX

Hello everybody

Im trying to implement some AJAX to my theme, but theres a few things i cannot get my head (or Google) around.

I have a custom post type named “Faculty” and a page displaying the featured image for each entry in the custom post type in a grid that links to /faculty/entry1, /faculty/entry2 etc.

Instead of loading a new page with the content Im trying to load the content above the grid using the admin-ajax.php file.

But how can i implement this leveraging the current “pretty” permalinks?

What i would like to achieve is that the user clicks the featured image and the url would change to /faculty/item2 and i would receive the content for item2 via AJAX. And i the user manually enters /faculty/item2 in the browser the same faculty page would load with the content from item2.

I really hope the explanation makes sense – and that somebody can give me a pointer in the right direction. Thanks a lot and happy sunday ??

EDIT: This is an example of the functionality im looking for, just with the wordpress permalinks implemented: https://themewich.com/aware/