PlanGrid

PlanGrid is a static academic study-plan editor for advising sessions and personal planning. It behaves like a flexible whiteboard: courses can be searched, placed on a credit grid, moved between semesters, stored for later, and shared without creating an account.

Open PlanGrid

PlanGrid is an unofficial tool. It provides advisory prerequisite and corequisite warnings from current offering metadata, but does not certify official degree requirements.

The ? button beside the PlanGrid brand opens a short English/Spanish guide inside the application. The brand itself links back to this repository.

Features

• Editable semester count, term sequence, plan name, and credit limit
• Uniandes course search by code or name
• Lazy catalog-description search across the Uniandes 2026 catalog
• Catalog/API availability cues for the current 202620 offering API
• Credit-sized cards with cell-snapped drag and drop
• Right-click course cards to mark/unmark them as coursed without locking edits
• Browser-level English/Spanish interface preference with a first-use prompt
• Storage area for unplaced courses
• Duplicate-course, fallback-metadata, unverified, and semester-overload warnings
• Advisory prerequisite/corequisite checks based on current 202620 offering details
• Plan-level recognition for homologated precalculus and fulfilled language requirements
• Browser autosave using plangrid.currentPlan.v1
• Auto-discovered .plan presets, including blank and ISIS study plans
• Import and export through sectioned CSV .plan files
• Presentation-ready PNG export
• Static deployment with GitHub Pages

Use PlanGrid

1. Start from the blank plan or choose a preset in the sidebar.
2. Search for a course and drag results into a semester or storage.
3. If current offering search is weak, use Search catalog descriptions too to search the static 2026 catalog index.
4. Edit the plan title, semester periods, semester count, and credit limit directly on the planner.
5. Right-click any planned or stored course card to mark it as coursed. Coursed cards render with lower opacity but can still be moved, inspected, exported, or removed.
6. Review warnings without losing the ability to move or add courses.
7. Use Export Plan for an editable backup or Export PNG for sharing.

Loading a preset or importing a .plan file replaces the current autosaved plan after confirmation.

PlanGrid opens in English by default. On first use, it shows a language prompt that can switch the interface to Spanish. The language choice is saved in this browser and can be changed later from the plan options ... menu.

Plan Files

.plan files are human-readable CSV documents containing sectioned tables:

• [plan] stores the format version, plan name, and credit limit.
• [courses] stores reusable course and catalog metadata.
• [requirement_checks], [prerequisites], and [corequisites] store advisory requirement metadata.
• [recognized_requirements] stores plan-level fulfilled requirement options.
• [color_overrides] stores enabled color override scheme IDs.
• [semesters] stores semester labels, terms, and course starting slots.
• [storage] stores unplaced course codes.

The file stores course codes, names, credits, departments, source/availability metadata, catalog summaries, plan timestamps, semester placement, and fallback status. Format version 7 preserves catalog-only courses, requirement checks, recognized requirements, concurrent prerequisite * markers, and per-card coursed state through readable metadata tables. It also preserves which color override schemes are enabled. During import, PlanGrid still requests current metadata from the Uniandes course service. Fresh API metadata takes priority for current planning fields; embedded catalog metadata is preserved for details and used when the service is unavailable or no course is returned. A synthetic three-credit card and visible warning are used only when neither source has metadata.

Each loaded plan keeps two separate labels: its physical .plan filename and its internal plan_name. The internal name is shown as the editable plan title and in the preset menu. Importing captures the selected file's filename for reference. Exported files are named from the sanitized internal name and local date as <name>-YYYY-MM-DD.plan. Legacy browser saves without a filename receive one derived from their internal name.

Presets

Presets are ordinary current-version .plan files in src/presets/. Vite discovers every *.plan file in that directory at build time, validates it with the normal plan parser, and uses its internal plan_name in the preset menu. The physical filename appears beneath the internal name.

To add a preset:

1. Create or import the plan in PlanGrid.
2. Export it as a .plan file.
3. Move the file into src/presets/.
4. Run npm test and npm run build.

No TypeScript registry, alternate JSON schema, or conversion command is required. Loading a preset clones its plan identity while retaining its filename, internal name, layout, metadata, and plan options.

Catalog Search

PlanGrid's default search uses the current Uniandes offering API and stays fast. Thorough catalog search is lazy: the app loads public/catalog/catalog-index-2026.json only when the user asks to search catalog descriptions. The index is generated from Uniandes SmartCatalog 2026 and committed as a static asset so GitHub Pages does not need a backend or build-time network access.

Availability labels mean only whether a course appears in the current 202620 offering API. They do not indicate seats, schedule fit, future offerings, degree validity, or requirement approval. Catalog-only courses can still be added as planning placeholders.

Prerequisite/corequisite checks use one representative current offering and only enforce course codes recognized by the 2026 catalog. Abstract or unrecognized requirement text is ignored. These warnings are planning guidance, not official academic validation.

Eight-week (8A/8B) target courses may satisfy prerequisites with courses in the same semester. A prerequisite marked with * by the API can also be taken in the same semester as its target, regardless of the target's duration. Requirement warnings simplify compound rules to show only the branches that are still unmet; the details drawer retains the full normalized rule and original API expression for reference. Plan options can mark homologated precalculus (MATE-1201/MATE1/MATS1) or the common Uniandes foreign-language aliases as already fulfilled. These recognitions are saved with the plan and exported in .plan format version 7.

Course Colors

Course colors are generated from each course department hue and the first digit of the course number. Level 1 courses use the lightest bracket; levels 2, 3, and 4 step down to darker brackets. Department overrides keep this brightness rule; course-specific overrides use their configured color exactly.

Color exceptions live in src/config/courseColorOverrides.json. Each scheme has an id, display name, enabled flag, optional departmentOverrides, and optional courseOverrides. The JSON enabled flag defines the default selection for new or older plans; users can turn schemes on or off from the plan options ... menu. Course-specific overrides take priority over department overrides. The included Estudio Ingenieria de Sistemas scheme sets ISIS-1611 to #6320ee; the separate Friendly MATE scheme softens the MATE department color.

Department override hex values provide hue and saturation while the generated level bracket replaces their lightness. Course override hex values are rendered verbatim. A saved plan's menu selection takes precedence over a scheme's JSON enabled default, so confirm the scheme is checked under ... > Color overrides. Changes to the source JSON appear immediately under npm run dev; rebuild with npm run build when serving dist/.

Rebuild the static catalog index with:

npm run build:catalog

The 2026 SmartCatalog page itself describes courses active during 2025; PlanGrid keeps the source version as catalogYear: "2026" because that is the catalog route and handoff target.

Run Locally

Requirements:

• Node.js 20 or newer
• npm

./setup.sh
./dev.sh

The development server defaults to http://127.0.0.1:5173.

HOST=0.0.0.0 PORT=3000 ./dev.sh

Root-level utility scripts:

./test.sh
./build.sh
./preview.sh

The production build is written to dist/ with relative asset paths.

Deploy to GitHub Pages

The workflow at .github/workflows/deploy-pages.yml runs tests, builds the site, and deploys dist/ whenever main is updated.

1. Push the repository to GitHub.
2. Open Settings > Pages.
3. Set Source to GitHub Actions.
4. Push or merge the project into main, or run the workflow manually from the Actions tab.

No server, database, secrets, or environment variables are required.

Architecture

PlanGrid uses Vite, strict TypeScript, native DOM rendering, native drag and drop, Vitest, MiniSearch, and html-to-image. API responses are normalized behind src/api/courseApi.ts; catalog search lives behind lazy client-side search modules; plan validation, persistence, presets, and file serialization remain independent from the UI. Presets reuse the same parser and hydration path as imported .plan files.

Disclaimer

This is an unofficial planning tool. It does not certify graduation requirements. Students should confirm final plans with academic coordination or an advisor.

The included ISIS starter is an editable planning aid based on the official 2026-20 navigation diagram, not a complete or authoritative curriculum.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.