Syllabus → Google Calendar

Syllabus → Google Calendar Main Interface

Inspiration

At the start of every semester my friend and I spend way too much time pulling dates out of long syllabi and typing them into Google Calendar. It is stressful and easy to mess up. We wanted a simple tool that could take that work off students and make the start of the semester feel manageable.

What it does

Syllabus → Google Calendar reads your syllabus and turns all important dates into real Google Calendar events. Exams, quizzes, assignments, and class meetings are detected and added automatically so students stay organized without extra effort.

How we built it

We created a Chrome extension with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. We wrote a custom parser that handles different syllabus styles and extracts dates and times. We connected everything to the Google Calendar API so events appear instantly. We built it together through GitHub and split the work between UI and parsing.

Challenges we ran into

Syllabi vary a lot so building a parser that works across formats was difficult. Extracting times from messy text took multiple attempts. Calendar authentication for extensions was also tricky. Working under a hackathon time limit made each issue feel bigger but we solved them one by one.

Accomplishments that we are proud of

We built a working end to end flow from syllabus text to calendar. The tool is fast, simple, and helpful. Our parser handles many syllabus styles. We also figured out Google Calendar integration without a backend. Most importantly we made something students can actually use.

What we learned

We learned how to build a Chrome extension from scratch, how to connect to Google Calendar, and how to design flexible text parsing. We also learned how to split work, collaborate quickly, and create something useful under pressure.