Syllabus to calendar · Free · Nothing to install
Your syllabus already has a calendar in it.
Drop in the PDF. SyllabusSpy reads every due date, exam, quiz and reading off it and hands your whole semester to Google Calendar, Outlook or Apple Calendar in about ten seconds.
- The PDF stays on your device
- Reading it happens in your browser. Nothing is uploaded unless you choose it — saving the schedule to an account, or handing us the file yourself so we can fix what it got wrong.
- Every class, on every calendar
-
One link for your whole semester, read by Google Calendar, Outlook, Apple Calendar,
Thunderbird, Notion, anything that takes a standard
.icsfile. - Free, and not a trial
- No card, no per-semester fee, nothing held back for an upgrade. It got built because typing forty dates into a calendar twice a year is a bad way to spend an evening.
How it works
Three steps, and the middle one is the point.
Anything that reads a syllabus automatically will get something wrong, because the documents are too varied for that not to happen. So the second step is a review table rather than a spinner.
-
1
Upload the syllabus PDF
Or paste the schedule as plain text, or connect Canvas and let it pull your assignment due dates straight from the course.
-
2
Check what it found
Every date sits next to the line of the syllabus it came from, and anything it was unsure about is flagged. Fix a title, move a date, drop all thirty chapter readings in one tap.
-
3
Send it to Google, Outlook or Apple
Subscribe once and later corrections follow automatically, or download a
.icsand import it, or add single events one at a time.
Rules, not AI
Less clever than an AI. Better at everything else.
SyllabusSpy reads a syllabus with rules rather than a language model. On a strangely laid out document, an LLM would probably catch a row or two that this misses. That is the trade, and it is worth saying plainly.
What you get for it: an answer in a fraction of a second instead of a wait, nothing to pay per upload, a PDF that never leaves your laptop, and the line of the syllabus each entry came from. It also cannot hallucinate a deadline, because it can only copy what is printed in front of it.
And you look at the list before any of it reaches your calendar, which is where most of the difference stops mattering.
- Speed
- Instant, on your device
- Seconds, after an upload
- Cost
- Nothing
- Paid, per document
- Your PDF
- Never leaves the browser
- Sent to a server
- Shows its source
- Every date, line by line
- Rarely
- Invented dates
- Not possible
- Possible
- Odd layouts
- Good, not perfect
- Slightly better
What it reads
Syllabi are written by people, not by a template.
The parser was built against the shapes professors actually use: the week-by-week schedule table, the bulleted list of important dates, the paragraph that mentions a midterm in passing. It handles all three, and it knows the difference between a date and a number that merely looks like one.
It was tuned against syllabi from real courses, and every document that breaks it becomes a test case, so the awkward one you are about to upload is the kind it was built for.
Dates in any form
The year you meant
Two deadlines in one row
What it deliberately skips
Times, when stated
Sorted into kinds
Google, Outlook, Apple
Subscribe once. Fix a typo in March and your phone knows.
A downloaded file is a snapshot: change something later and you are back to editing forty events by hand. So the option offered first is a subscription, a private link your calendar app checks on its own.
Professors move exams. When yours does, you change it here and it changes everywhere you subscribed.
Try it with your syllabus-
Google Calendar
-
Outlook
-
Apple Calendar
-
All five classes at once
-
A plain .ics file
Reminders
An email the night before, if you want one.
Calendar alerts are easy to swipe away at 8am. So there is a second, quieter option: one email listing what falls on a given day, sent as far ahead as you like, at the hour you choose, in your own timezone.
Off by default. One link in the footer of any of them turns it off for good. The only other thing you would ever be emailed is a service notice — the terms changing, or the service going away — and there is no newsletter behind either of them.
Best-effort, though, not a guarantee. A reminder can be late or land in spam, and SyllabusSpy is free and may be shut down at any point without notice — at which point these stop and so do calendar subscriptions. Do not make this the only place a deadline is written down.
3 things due tomorrow
Thu, Nov 12
- Assignment HW 4 · 11:59 PM
- Quiz Quiz 3 · all day
- Exam Midterm Exam · 10:00 AM
Privacy
Your syllabus is not our data set.
The PDF is opened and read by code running in your own browser. It is not uploaded to be parsed, it is not sent to a language model, and it is not stored anywhere unless you sign in and press save, in which case what is stored is the list of dates rather than the file.
No advertising, no analytics that follow you, nothing sold. Delete a schedule and it is gone from the database, along with the subscription link that pointed at it.
Read the privacy policyQuestions
Still unsure about something? Upload a syllabus and see what it does with it. Nothing is saved and nothing is sent while you look.
Do I have to make an account?
Not to upload a syllabus, review the dates and download an
.ics. You
need one only for the things that require us to remember something: saving a
schedule, the subscription link that keeps updating, and reminder emails.
Is it as accurate as ChatGPT or another AI?
On a strangely laid out syllabus, probably a little less. It reads with rules rather than a language model, so it can only copy dates that are actually printed in the document and can never invent one. In exchange it is instant, costs nothing, works with no internet connection, and shows you the line every entry came from. You check the list before anything reaches your calendar, which is where most of the difference stops mattering.
What if it misses something?
It will, on some documents, which is why nothing goes to your calendar without passing through the review table first. Every row shows the line of the syllabus it came from, low-confidence rows are flagged, and you can add anything it missed by hand. Treat it as a very fast first draft rather than an oracle.
How much does it cost, and why is it free?
Nothing, and there is no catch. I built it for myself: I had a stack of syllabi, no interest in typing sixty dates into Google Calendar by hand, and less interest in paying a subscription for what is, underneath, a text parser. The paid ones wanted money every semester to do a job I resented having to do at all. So I wrote this one. Your browser does the work, so it costs almost nothing to run, and there is no plan to bolt a price onto it later.
What happens if SyllabusSpy shuts down?
It might. It is free, it is one person, and there is no promise of a term's worth of
service — so it is worth knowing what goes with it. Reminder emails stop. Calendar
subscriptions stop updating, because a subscription is your calendar re-reading a
link on this server. What does not stop is the
.ics
file: a calendar you imported from a download is a copy on your own device and owes
us nothing. That is why the export step offers both, and why your syllabus is still
the authority for anything that matters.
Can I just have an AI read it instead?
Yes, and for a syllabus laid out in a way this parser cannot follow, you should. The paste step has a button that hands you a written-out prompt: attach the PDF to Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini, paste the prompt, and paste the answer back here. The prompt asks for the exact table shape SyllabusSpy reads best, so a row still splits into a class, a reading and a deadline. One thing to weigh first — that route sends your syllabus to that company, which is the one path in the app where the file leaves your device. Everything it gives back still goes through the review step, which is what makes it safe: a model will occasionally write a confident deadline that is not in your syllabus.
My syllabus is a scan. Will that work?
Usually, with a caveat worth stating plainly. When a PDF turns out to be pictures rather than text, SyllabusSpy offers to read it with OCR, on your device like everything else. Prose comes through well. Bordered schedule tables are much harder, and on our own test scan it recovered about half the rows. Everything it did find was correct, but you have to check for what is missing. If you can select the text anywhere at all, pasting it is better.
How does the Canvas connection work?
You generate a read-only access token in your own Canvas settings and paste it in. It is used to list your courses and their assignment due dates, and it is not kept afterwards. It is not a substitute for the syllabus, since Canvas rarely has the readings or the exam times, but it is very good at assignment deadlines.
I take five classes. Do I end up with five calendars?
Only if you want them. Every syllabus you add is its own schedule so you can fix one without touching the others, but there is also a single combined calendar covering all of them, with one subscription link and every entry labelled with its course. Most people subscribe to that one and never think about it again.
Will this mess up the calendar I already have?
No. A subscription arrives as its own separate calendar you can hide or remove in one
click, and it never writes to anything else. An imported
.ics can be
pointed at a new calendar too, which we suggest doing.
Does it work on a phone?
Yes. Uploading, reviewing and subscribing all work in a phone browser, and on an iPhone the subscription link opens straight into Apple Calendar. There is no app to install. A laptop is easier for a long review table, but neither is required.
What happens next semester?
Upload the new syllabi, and delete the old schedules once you are done with them. Deleting one takes its events and its subscription link with it. Nothing expires on its own, and there is no per-semester charge to forget about.