CSEvents @ Cornell

Inspiration

Every semester at Cornell, I'd miss events I actually wanted to go to — not because I wasn't interested, but because I simply didn't know they were happening. A Jane Street info session buried in an Instagram post message. A Y Combinator fireside chat announced on an Instagram story that expired. An App Dev workshop on a flyer in Duffield I walked past once and forgot about. Cornell has an incredible CS club ecosystem for opportunities— DTI, AppDev, URMC, Cornell Armada, WICC, and more — but there's no single place where any of it lives. The discovery is entirely scattered through word-of-mouth, Instagram, Luma, or flyers in Duffield, and if you're not already in the right circles, you miss out. I built CS Events @ Cornell because I wished it existed when I was a freshman. It's a centralized location for CS Clubs to post events/opportunities, and CS students to attend them.

What it does

CS Events @ Cornell is a mobile app that centralizes every CS and tech club event at Cornell in one place. Students can browse upcoming events, filter by category (company visits, hackathons, career prep, famous speakers, and more), RSVP, and track what they're going to. Club admins get their own dashboard to post events and monitor turnout. The goal is simple: no more hunting across Instagram, Luma, email, and flyers — just open the app.

How we built it

Built entirely in SwiftUI with Swift 6, targeting iOS 26. The app uses the @Observable macro for state management across two user roles — members and club admins — with a tab-based navigation structure for each. Custom typography (DM Sans) is used throughout for a clean, modern feel. The club-side includes a post-event flow inspired by the iOS Calendar UI, a dashboard with past/upcoming event splits, and an editable club bio. The member side includes category filtering, RSVP tracking grouped by week, club follow functionality, and a social-style profile. For the backend, we used Vercel to host the routes (written in Flask), and hosted the Postgres database in Supabase.

Challenges we ran into

Our biggest challenge was design. We wanted something as simple and clear as possible — an app where a Cornell student could open it and immediately know what's happening this week without any friction. The temptation was to overbuild, but we kept asking: does this make discovery easier, or just noisier? We also thought hard about differentiation from tools like Luma. Luma is great, but it's generic — it's not built for Cornell, it doesn't know what DTI or URMC or Armada is, and it puts the burden of discovery on the student. We're not an event hosting platform. We're a centralized feed built specifically for the Cornell CS community, where clubs post and students explore — all in one place that actually understands the ecosystem.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Getting both user roles (member and club admin) feeling like genuinely different, purpose-built experiences rather than the same UI with things hidden. The post-event success overlay with its spring animation felt like a small but meaningful touch. And honestly — just shipping something that solves a real, personal frustration felt good.

What we learned

How much SwiftUI's @Observable macro simplifies reactive state once you fully commit to it. That great product ideas come from lived frustration, not brainstorming sessions. And that the hardest part of building for a community you're part of is resisting the urge to keep adding — knowing when the core experience is enough.