Navigate BU's 6,000+ courses with AI-powered insights and career guidance

DS-X is an intelligent academic planning platform designed specifically for Boston University students. Built during Boston University DS+X 2025, it transforms the complex process of course selection and degree planning into a seamless, AI-powered experience.

• Search 6,000+ BU Courses: Comprehensive catalog across all schools (CAS, ENG, COM, etc.)
• Advanced Filtering: By level (introductory/intermediate/advanced), credits, school, and Hub requirements
• Real-time Search: Instant results as you type with intelligent matching

• Custom Career Recommendations: Enter any career goal and get relevant course suggestions
• Intelligent Course Matching: Powered by Google Gemini AI to analyze career requirements and course content
• Skill Gap Analysis: See what percentage of required skills each course path covers
• Interactive Chat Advisor: Ask questions about degree planning, course selection, and academic strategy

• Credit Tracking: Real-time monitoring of semester and total credit load
• Multi-Semester View: Plan 4 years (8 semesters), if not more, in advance

• BU Hub Requirements: Track all 21 Hub requirements across 6 categories toward your 26 required units
• Visual Progress Indicators: Circular charts and status tables for degree completion
• Milestone Tracking: See how many courses, credits, and Hub units you've completed
• Motivational Feedback: Progress-based encouragement as you work toward graduation

• 4,000+ Faculty Profiles: Browse professors across all BU departments
• Research Exploration: View publications via OpenAlex integration
• AI Email Generator: Create professional outreach emails to connect with faculty
• Department Filtering: Find professors by department

• React 18.3 - UI library for building interactive interfaces
• TypeScript 5.5 - Type-safe JavaScript for better developer experience
• Vite - Lightning-fast build tool and dev server
• Tailwind CSS - Utility-first CSS framework for rapid styling
• Zustand - Lightweight state management
• React Router - Client-side routing
• Axios - HTTP client for API requests
• Lucide React - Beautiful icon library

• Python 3.11 - Modern Python with type hints
• FastAPI - High-performance async web framework
• PostgreSQL - Robust relational database
• SQLAlchemy - Python ORM for database operations
• Pandas - Data manipulation and analysis
• Google Gemini API - AI-powered course recommendations
• OpenAlex API - Academic research paper integration
• Uvicorn - ASGI server for FastAPI

• Beautiful Soup - Web scraping BU course catalogs
• Pandas - Data cleaning and preprocessing
• Custom Python Scripts - Course and faculty data extraction

• Git & GitHub - Version control and collaboration
• Vercel (planned) - Frontend deployment
• Railway (planned) - Backend deployment

Before you begin, ensure you have the following installed:

• Node.js (v18 or higher) - Download
• npm (comes with Node.js)
• Python (v3.11 or higher) - Download
• PostgreSQL (v14 or higher) - Download
• Git - Download

1. Clone the repository

2. Set up the Frontend

   cd frontend
   npm install
   npm run dev

3. Set up the Backend

   cd ../backend
   python -m venv venv
   source venv/bin/activate  # On Windows: venv\Scripts\activate
   pip install -r requirements.txt
   python3 -m uvicorn app.main:app --reload

4. Configure Environment Variables

   Create a .env file in the backend directory:

   # Google Gemini AI
   GEMINI_API_KEY=your_gemini_api_key_here
   
   # OpenAlex (optional - for professor research)
   OPENALEX_EMAIL=[email protected]
   
   # Server
   ENVIRONMENT=development
   SECRET_KEY=your_secret_key_here

   Create a .env file in the frontend directory:

   VITE_API_BASE_URL=http://localhost:8000

You'll need two terminal windows:

Terminal 1 - Frontend:

cd frontend
npm run dev

Frontend will be available at: http://localhost:5173

Terminal 2 - Backend:

cd backend
source venv/bin/activate  # On Windows: venv\Scripts\activate
python -m uvicorn app.main:app --reload

Backend will be available at: http://localhost:8000

API documentation (Swagger UI): http://localhost:8000/docs

http://localhost:8000/api

Full interactive API documentation available at: http://localhost:8000/docs

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.