Academic OS keeps college and scholarship applications, courses and grades, essays, and every deadline between them on one board. No account. No cloud. Your data is a folder on your machine, and the assistant runs there too.
v0.5.1 · Free during early access · Mac, Windows, Linux · Source on GitHub
Pick your stage once. The board renames itself, the sidebar reorders, and the checklists change. Five stages, none of them second-class.
Applying to colleges and scholarships.
The board is called Colleges. A one-click FAFSA card arrives with the real federal deadline and the FSA ID checklist, and the scholarship scout searches trusted sources against your profile.
Colleges, scholarships, grad programs, and exchange programs move through the same five columns: researching, preparing, submitted, interview, decision.
Connect Canvas with a token and your courses, assignments, and grades arrive on their own. Or add them yourself.
Application deadlines, assignment due dates, study tasks, and exam dates share one calendar, a next-seven-days agenda, and, on Mac, a daily reminder notification.
Write drafts in the app, keep version history, and attach transcripts, certificates, and PDFs next to them.
A scholarship scout and a deadline watcher run on a schedule. Reading needs no approval. Anything that would change your data goes through an approval queue first.
Proposed by the scholarship scout from a trusted source. Nothing is written until you approve.
Your applications, essays, grades, and the notes you would never post anywhere stay in one folder you can open in Finder or Explorer. That is the product, not a setting.
~/.academic-os
├── data/
│ ├── profile.json
│ ├── applications/
│ │ └── items.jsonl
│ ├── courses/
│ │ ├── courses.jsonl
│ │ └── assignments.jsonl
│ ├── study/
│ │ └── tasks.jsonl
│ └── documents/
│ └── items.jsonl
└── agents/
├── deadline-watcher.md
└── scholarship-scout.mdSet a different folder with ACADEMIC_OS_DATA. Upgrading installs over the old version and keeps everything here.
Free during early access. The builds are not code-signed yet, so Mac and Windows need an extra step on first launch. The steps are written out below, exactly as they happen.
Local AI is a one-time model download from Settings: 2.5 GB recommended, 400 MB for older machines. After that everything works offline. Already running Ollama? The app uses it instead.
All releases and notespython -m venv .venv
.venv/bin/pip install -r requirements.txt
ACADEMIC_OS_DATA=~/.academic-os .venv/bin/uvicorn backend.app:app --port 7878
cd webui && npm install && npm run devShort answers. The privacy policy and terms have the long ones.
Yes, during early access. There is no account and nothing to pay today. The source code is published on GitHub under the Business Source License, which permits personal, non-commercial, and educational use.
Yes, after setup. Local AI needs a one-time model download from Settings: 2.5 GB recommended, 400 MB for older machines. Canvas sync and the scholarship scout need a connection while they run.
In a folder on your computer, ~/.academic-os by default, as plain files. The in-app backup copies it to any folder you choose, and restore takes a safety snapshot first. Deleting the folder deletes everything.
The builds are not code-signed yet. On a Mac, dismiss the warning, then open System Settings, Privacy & Security, and choose Open Anyway. On Windows, click More info, then Run anyway. The exact steps are in the Download section.
No. Add courses and assignments by hand, connect Canvas with a personal access token, or paste a school calendar link. Synced records never overwrite the status, grade, or notes you set yourself.
High school, undergrad, gap year, grad school, and beyond. You pick one when the app first opens and can change it later in Settings.
Native reminder notifications are Mac-only today. The dashboard, calendar, and agenda show the same deadlines on every platform.
No. Install the new version over the old one. Your data folder is left alone.