ClubOps Autopilot

Inspiration

Student clubs often have strong ideas but limited time. Planning an event usually means jumping between group chats, spreadsheets, calendars, and scattered notes. Tasks are forgotten, deadlines are missed, responsibilities are unclear, and organizers may not realize something important is blocked until the last minute.

Our experiences with student clubs, hackathons, and team projects inspired us to build ClubOps Autopilot. Most planning tools still require organizers to manually create every task, deadline, assignment, reminder, and dependency. They help store work, but they do not actually create the plan.

We wanted to build something more useful than another checklist.

That led us to ClubOps Autopilot, a system that turns one event idea into a complete, organized, and trackable workflow.

What it does

ClubOps Autopilot automates the repetitive parts of event planning for student clubs, nonprofits, volunteer groups, and small organizations.

A user enters basic event information, including the name, date, type, attendance goal, and team members. ClubOps then automatically creates:

Planning, promotion, logistics, and follow-up tasks Deadlines calculated backward from the event date Task dependencies and blocked-task warnings Suggested owners and unassigned-task alerts Promotional messages and reminders A live event-readiness score An automation log showing what changed

ClubOps does more than generate a checklist. It creates a connected workflow.

For example, a promotional task may remain blocked until the venue is confirmed. Once that task is completed, the dependent work unlocks automatically and the readiness score updates in real time.

Every automatic action remains editable, so users stay in control.

How we built it

We built ClubOps Autopilot using React, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, Vite, browser storage, and Codex as a development assistant.

At the center of the project is a rule-based workflow engine. It uses structured event templates and user input to decide which tasks are needed.

Each task includes a category, deadline, priority, owner, completion status, critical status, dependencies, and an explanation of why it was created.

We also built a scheduling system that works backward from the event date and a dependency engine that marks tasks as blocked until required work is completed.

The readiness score combines several explainable factors:

R=0.40C+0.25T+0.15O+0.10D+0.10B

Where:

C represents completed critical tasks T represents total completed tasks O represents tasks with assigned owners D represents tasks that are not overdue B represents critical tasks that are not blocked

Instead of showing a random number, ClubOps explains what is lowering the score and what the team should do next.

We used browser storage so plans remain available after a refresh, and we added an automation log to record generated tasks, assignments, dependency changes, and updates.

Challenges we ran into

One of our biggest challenges was making the automation useful without making it feel like a black box.

A basic task generator would have been easier, but organizers need to understand why tasks exist, what they depend on, who owns them, and how they affect the rest of the event.

We solved this by making the system explainable and editable.

Another challenge was calculating deadlines correctly. Different tasks need to happen at different times, so we created relative scheduling rules that work backward from the event date.

We also had to make sure that completing one task immediately updated related tasks, blocked states, and the readiness score without creating conflicts.

Finally, we carefully managed our scope by focusing on one complete workflow instead of adding many unfinished integrations.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are most proud that ClubOps automates an entire planning workflow rather than only generating text.

From one event brief, the system creates tasks, deadlines, dependencies, assignments, messages, reminders, and readiness information.

We are also proud of the dependency system, which allows tasks to respond to one another. Completing an important task can unlock the next stage of the plan and immediately update the readiness score.

The automation log also makes the system transparent by showing users what ClubOps created and changed.

Most importantly, automation is not an extra feature. It is the foundation of the entire project.

What we learned

We learned that strong automation should be understandable, reliable, editable, and safe.

Through this project, we learned how to:

Build a rule-based workflow engine Model task dependencies Calculate deadlines dynamically Manage reactive application state Design an explainable scoring system Store and restore structured user data Balance automation with human control

We also learned that the best automation tools do not replace users. They remove repetitive work while helping users make better decisions.

What's next for ClubOps Autopilot

Our next goal is to turn ClubOps into a complete operations platform for student organizations and small teams.

Future features could include:

Google Calendar integration Discord and email notifications Real-time collaboration Volunteer shift generation More event templates Automatic recovery plans for missed deadlines Reusable workflows for recurring events Post-event analytics

Our long-term vision is for ClubOps Autopilot to become an operating system for student clubs, nonprofits, volunteer teams, and community organizations, helping teams spend less time managing tasks and more time creating meaningful events.