Terp-AI

The one-liner :
The place a UMD student goes when they haven't told anyone yet.

The category: Not a chatbot. Not a directory of campus offices. Not a university help desk. Terp AI is emotional infrastructure — the first thing a student opens at 1am, before they tell a parent, an advisor, an RA, or a
friend who might judge them.

The ache it speaks to: Every UMD student already knows the answer is somewhere. The website exists. Reddit exists. ChatGPT exists. The problem isn't information — it's that nobody acts like they're on your side when you ask. Websites are bureaucratic. Counselors feel expensive to approach. Friends might judge. "I'm scared to ask, and even when I ask, nobody acts like they care."

Who it's for
A stressed UMD undergrad — often first-generation, often anxious, often without a parent or older sibling who knows how college bureaucracy works — typing a half-formed, misspelled, embarrassed question
between 11pm and 3am. The design target is the one-time user at the moment of first courage, not the daily active user. That choice reverses most of the usual product instincts.

What it answers
The questions that actually surface at 1am: financial aid appeals, SAP failures, bursar holds, CAPS walk-ins, course drops, failing out, Title IX vs. CARE, pregnancy scares, food insecurity, getting outed,
immigration status, the phrase "I don't want to be here anymore."

The voice
Like a text from an upperclassman who's been through it — short, lowercase, no jargon, no disclaimer walls, no "please reach out to the office of…". Opens with the answer, never with performative empathy.
Names the next concrete step in plain language. Asks one clarifying question instead of six. Treats the act of asking as the hardest part, because it already cost the student something to hit send.

What it refuses to be
No login. No personalization. No avatar. No mascot. No UMD seal or red-and-gold. No suggested prompts. No trending questions. No thumbs-up/down feedback. No source citations. No "I'm an AI" disclaimers. No
history. Refresh = clean slate, on purpose. The absence of these things is the product's first act of trust.

Why it works
The depth of UMD-specific knowledge — Shoemaker, Lee Building, Stamp, CAPS at 301-314-7651, CARE at 301-741-3442, the Mitchell Building Dean of Students office — combined with a voice tuned for the one moment
that matters: when a scared student finally types the thing they couldn't say out loud, and something real comes back.

Built for the Claude Hackathon, deliberately narrow, deliberately deep, deliberately faceless.

Built With

• javascript
• kimi
• next