Syllabus Summaries — AI-Powered Course Intelligence

React + Flask + Google Gemini (2.5 Flash)
An end-to-end full-stack application that automatically extracts and structures key information from university syllabi.

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Overview

Syllabus Summaries is an AI-enhanced tool that allows students to upload a syllabus (PDF or text) and instantly receive an organized breakdown of the course, including:

• Important due dates
• Grading breakdown and percentages
• Required vs. optional textbooks
• Key course policies
• A tailored “How to get an A” strategy
• A predicted weekly workload visualization

This project leverages Flask for backend processing, React + TailwindCSS + Recharts for the frontend, and Google Gemini 2.5 Flash for AI-powered document understanding.

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How AI Is Used

The application integrates Google Gemini 2.5 Flash through the REST generateContent API. AI assists by:

Structured Syllabus Parsing

Gemini reads the entire syllabus and returns structured JSON following a strict schema:

{
  "course_title": null,
  "instructor_name": null,
  "emails": [],
  "grading_breakdown": [],
  "deadlines": [],
  "textbooks_required": [],
  "textbooks_optional": [],
  "policies": [],
  "how_to_get_A": ""
}

Policy Extraction

Gemini automatically identifies:

• Attendance rules
• Late work policies
• Academic integrity statements
• Exam expectations
• AI usage rules
• Prerequisites and course expectations

Grade Strategy Generation

The model produces a tailored “How to get an A” strategy based on grading weights, deadlines, and expectations.

Tech Stack

Frontend

• React (Vite)
• TailwindCSS
• Recharts for workload graphs

Backend

• Python Flask
• Flask-CORS
• pdfplumber (PDF extraction)
• dateutil (date parsing)
• requests (AI HTTP calls)

AI

• Google Gemini 2.5 Flash (REST API)
• Explicit JSON- schema prompts
• Auto-cleaning of malformed or wrapped JSON
• Graceful fallback heuristics

Features

• AI-driven syllabus parsing
• Heuristic fallback system
• Automatic grading breakdown extraction
• Deadline and date detection
• Textbook identification
• AI-generated study strategy
• Policy extraction
• PDF and TXT support
• Weekly workload visualization