Shellmate

Message Demo on iPhone
Message Demo on Android
Message Flow

Inspiration

College campuses have a lot of support, but finding it is weirdly hard. Resources are scattered across department pages, PDFs, portals, emails, advising websites, scholarship pages, and career center links. The students who need help the most often have to know the “hidden curriculum” of college just to find the right office, deadline, or person to email.

Shellmate was inspired by that gap. We wanted to build something that feels less like a campus directory and more like a smart older student you can text when you do not know what to do next.

What it does

Shellmate is a campus buddy that students can access directly through iMessage or regular SMS. Instead of downloading another campus app or digging through scattered websites, students can simply text Shellmate when they need help.

A student can ask things like:

“I’m behind in my class, what should I do this week?”
“I’m first-gen and need scholarship help.”
“I need resume help before applying to internships.”
“I have time between classes, where should I study?”
“I don’t know who to email about this.”

Shellmate responds with clear next steps, relevant campus resources, and practical guidance. Instead of dumping a list of links, it explains what to do first, why that resource fits, and what action the student should take next.

How we built it

We built Shellmate as a messaging-first campus assistant that can be reached through iMessage or SMS. The system is designed around a simple loop:

$$ \text{Student Text} \rightarrow \text{Context Understanding} \rightarrow \text{Resource Matching} \rightarrow \text{Actionable Reply} $$

Incoming messages are handled by our messaging layer, which forwards the student’s question to the Shellmate backend. The backend handles the chat logic, user context, memory, and resource routing. It understands the student’s plain-English problem, classifies the type of help they need, matches it with relevant campus information, and returns a short action plan back through text.

We focused on making the experience feel native to students by keeping the tone casual, direct, and low-friction. The goal was not to build another app students have to remember to open. The goal was to meet them where they already communicate: their messages.

For campus knowledge, we designed Shellmate around a resource layer that can include scraped university pages, curated campus resources, and structured information about offices, programs, deadlines, and eligibility. The assistant can then use this information to recommend the best next move instead of giving generic advice.

Challenges we ran into

One of the biggest challenges was narrowing the scope. A campus assistant can become huge very quickly: tutoring, financial aid, career prep, scheduling, events, clubs, mental health, food support, advising, and more. For the hackathon, we had to focus on the sharpest version of the idea: helping students turn confusion into one clear next step.

Another challenge was making the assistant feel useful instead of generic. A lot of chatbots answer questions, but students need action. So we focused on response formats that include:

what to do first
why it matters
who to contact
what to say
a backup option

We also had to think carefully about trust. Campus advice should be grounded in real sources, especially when it involves deadlines, eligibility, or support services. This pushed us toward building Shellmate as a source-backed campus intelligence layer rather than just a general chatbot.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud that Shellmate feels simple on the surface but solves a real problem underneath. The interface is just a text conversation, but behind it is the idea of connecting students to the right campus support at the right time.

We are also proud of the equity angle. Shellmate helps reduce the advantage gap between students who already know how to navigate college and students who are still figuring it out. The product is not just about convenience. It is about making opportunity easier to access.

We also created a brand and product direction that feels student-native: friendly, casual, practical, and UMD-inspired.

What we learned

We learned that the biggest student support problem is often not the absence of resources. It is discovery, timing, and confidence.

A student may not know:

what a campus office actually does
whether they are eligible for a program
how to phrase an email
whether their problem is “serious enough” to ask for help
which resource to try first

We also learned that a good AI assistant should not only answer questions. It should reduce friction. Sometimes the most valuable output is not a long explanation. It is a simple sentence like:

“Do this first, and here’s the next step.”

What's next for Shellmate

Next, we want to make Shellmate more deeply campus-aware and personalized.

Future improvements include:

expanding the UMD resource database
adding source citations for every recommendation
integrating live scraping for updated deadlines and resources
expanding support to more messaging platforms like WhatsApp, Discord, and GroupMe
saving user preferences, goals, and context
adding proactive reminders for deadlines and opportunities
creating a campus insights dashboard to show what students are struggling to find

Long term, Shellmate could become a student success layer for universities: one simple text interface for students, and one intelligence system that helps campuses understand where support is not reaching people.

Shellmate’s mission is simple: students should not need insider knowledge to get help.