Kairos

Kairos is a tool that allows you to plan your day in Google Calendar by turning typed-English into fully-detailed calendar events.

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Inspiration

As someone who has had ADHD for most of my life, having a detailed calendar helps me stay organized, remember important events, and be more productive. I live by my calendar, but the problem is that every night I spend way too much time manually building out my schedule for the next day, which gets frustrating. I wanted to make something that would make it easier and faster. The idea was “Kairos”, which is a Greek word for “The right or opportune moment.” This felt pretty fitting for a tool based on planning. My goal was to build something that can let people describe their events, and it can easily turn into calendar events.

What it does

Kairos is an AI-powered web app that connects to Google Calendar and lets people manage their schedules easily using basic English. Users can add events by typing them, plan around their open time in their calendar, detect conflicts before committing to an event, update or delete existing events, or create recurring events such as classes or study sessions.

For Example:

  • Coffee chat with UCLA Alumni at Kerckhoff Coffee House on Thursday from 3 to 5 PM.
  • Block out 2 hours tomorrow night so I can go explore Westwood.
  • Math 61 Lectures on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 12 to 12:50 PM for the next 8 weeks.

How I built it

Frontend:

  • React
  • Vite
  • FullCalendar

Backend:

  • Node.js
  • Express.js

Integrations:

  • Google OAuth2.0
  • Google Calendar API
  • OpenAI API (GPT-5-Mini)

Challenges I ran into

  • Implementing OAuth2
  • I spent a long time wondering why events were shifting an hour only to realize daylight savings was on March 8th
  • Handling ambiguous requests from the user and turning it into an AI request

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

  • I actually created a useful tool that I plan on using everyday now, which will save me a lot of time!
  • This was my first big full-stack project, and I'm happy with how much got done in 12 hours.

What we learned

  • Pretty much everything else, I've very lightly used React, Node.js, Vite, etc. But I learned a LOT more how they work after today
  • I've used the Google Calendar API and other services from them before, but I learned how to use the OpenAI API now!
  • First time using FullCalendar

What's next for Kairos

  • There's a couple bugs I want to fix but I also want to add "Suggested Times" feature for if there is a conflict detected, where it suggests where the user should potentially place the conflicting event. I also want to mess around with the AI more, trying to get it to understand more abstract/ambiguous sentences.
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