fau-academic-intelligence

Inspiration

Every FAU student has felt it — you check your grade mid-semester, see a 50, and freeze. You don't know where to start, what to prioritize, or if passing is even possible. Academic advisors have hundreds of students. Tutoring centers have long lines. At 2am before finals, there is nobody to help. We built the FAU Academic Intelligence System to be that help — instant, honest, and specific to your actual course.

What it does

Students upload their syllabus PDF and type their current grade and goal. The system reads the syllabus, extracts real grading weights and deadlines, calculates exactly what score they need on every remaining assignment, and generates a structured 4-week recovery plan with priority areas and strategic insight. It does not give generic advice — it gives a diagnosis specific to your course and situation.

How we built it

We built the frontend in React with a clean dark chat interface. The backend runs on Node.js and Express. PDF uploads are handled with Multer and sent directly to the Anthropic Claude API as base64 documents. Claude reads the syllabus, performs grade calculations, and returns a structured JSON recovery plan that the frontend renders as a visual decision dashboard.

Challenges we ran into

Getting Claude to return clean structured JSON consistently was the biggest challenge. We solved it by engineering a strict system prompt that forces raw JSON output and added a fallback parser that strips any markdown formatting before parsing. Handling PDF uploads and passing them correctly to the Claude API as base64 encoded documents also required careful implementation.

What we learned

We learned how powerful prompt engineering is — the difference between a well structured system prompt and a vague one is the difference between a product and a demo. We also learned how to build a full stack AI application from scratch in a single day under real pressure.

What's next for fau-academic-intelligence

We want to expand this to all Florida universities, add Canvas API integration so students can import their grades automatically, and build a mobile app so students can get their recovery plan on the go.

Built With

• anthropic
• api
• axios
• claude
• css
• express.js
• html
• javascript
• multer
• node.js
• react
• rest
• sonnet
• vite