Community College Course Finder

One query: which community college courses transfer (via ASSIST) and are offered this term (via live schedule lookups).

Web UI

Current status (v0.1): tuned for UCLA CS; ASSIST ingest fairly complete, schedule coverage pilot (~8 community colleges).

Quick start

Prereqs: Python 3.12 + uv

Clone repo, then install deps.

git clone https://github.com/FYC23/CC-course-finder
cd https://github.com/FYC23/CC-course-finder

uv python install 3.12
uv venv --python 3.12
source .venv/bin/activate
uv sync

First-time (required): ingest ASSIST articulation rows into data/assist.sqlite3.

uv run python -m src.assist.cli ingest \
  --target-school "University of California, Los Angeles" \
  --target-major "Computer Science" \
  --max-cc 100

Run web UI (joins articulation + schedule availability).

uv run uvicorn src.web.app:app --reload

Open http://127.0.0.1:8000.

Optional: run schedule CLI directly (example uses term "Summer 2026" and college name substring "West Valley").

uv run python -m src.schedule.cli query \
  --target-school "University of California, Los Angeles" \
  --target-major "Computer Science" \
  --term "Summer 2026" \
  --cc-name "West Valley" \
  --requirement "MATH 31B"

Problem

Finding community college courses that transfer to a specific university (e.g., UCLA CS) for a given term requires manually cross-referencing two separate systems:

1. ASSIST.org — tells you which CC courses transfer to your target school/major
2. Each CC's class schedule — tells you whether that course is actually being offered this term

No existing tool does both in one query. Result: students hand-check school-by-school, term-by-term.

Plan

v1 — Baseline (prototype, no AI)

Two components:

1. ASSIST layer (implemented here as a first-pass ingest pipeline)

• Input: target school + major (e.g., UCLA CS)
• Query ASSIST for agreements across CCs, download the corresponding PDF artifacts, and parse simple direct mappings
• Output: normalized articulation rows in SQLite, queryable by target requirement/equivalent (see CLI examples below)

2. Schedule layer (the novel part)

• For each CC in the result set, hit their class schedule search
• ~80% of CA CCs run on Banner or PeopleSoft — predictable URL/form patterns
• Parse: is this course offered in the target term? Online or in-person?
• Output: filter ASSIST results to only currently-offered courses

Stack: Python; ASSIST ingest via requests + pypdf; schedule lookups via per-system adapters.

Final output: "Here are 12 sections of Calc II transferable to UCLA CS, offered Summer 2026 — 5 are online."

v2 — Where an LLM might help (optional)

Only pull in an LLM if one of these specific problems comes up:

1. Messy course name matching — ASSIST says "Calculus II" but CC lists "Calculus for Life Sciences II." LLM fuzzy-matches better than regex.
2. Non-standard CC portals — a handful of CCs don't use Banner/PeopleSoft and have custom HTML. LLM-based extractor can parse arbitrary schedule pages without writing one-off scrapers.
3. Natural language query interface — e.g., "find me an online async stats course this summer under 3 units that transfers to UCLA" — that's where an LLM earns its place.

Build the dumb version first. Add LLM only when hitting a wall that can't be rule-based out of.

Development

ASSIST layer (current)

This repo now includes a first-pass ASSIST ingestion pipeline under src/assist.

• src/assist/discovery.py resolves institutions and agreement references.
• src/assist/fetch.py downloads and caches agreement artifacts.
• src/assist/parser.py runs a minimal deterministic parser for direct mappings.
• src/assist/store.py persists normalized articulation rows in SQLite.
• src/assist/cli.py provides ingest/query commands.

Artifacts are cached under data/assist_artifacts/, and the local SQLite database lives at data/assist.sqlite3.

Local environment

This project uses uv with a repo-local .venv. Install steps in Quick start.

Run tests

uv run pytest

Run the web UI (prototype)

This repo includes a small FastAPI-backed web UI under src/web that joins ASSIST articulation rows with schedule availability for a given term.

uv run uvicorn src.web.app:app --reload

Open http://127.0.0.1:8000 and search by university, major, term, and optional requirement filter.

Results UX notes:

• Grouped by UC requirement.
• Sorted within each group by availability: Offered → Not offered → Articulation only.
• Availability filter lets you show only one status.
  • "Articulation only" means the course is articulated in ASSIST, but this term's schedule availability wasn't found for that CC/course.

Ingest and query (single-target v1)

uv run python -m src.assist.cli ingest \
  --target-school "University of California, Los Angeles" \
  --target-major "Computer Science" \
  --max-cc 100

uv run python -m src.assist.cli query \
  --target-school "University of California, Los Angeles" \
  --target-major "Computer Science" \
  --requirement "MATH 31B"

--max-cc caps processing by unique community colleges, not raw ASSIST agreement candidate rows.

If ASSIST changes endpoint routing, you can override --api-prefix.

Schedule query (pilot v1)

The schedule layer now includes a pilot query command under src/schedule.

uv run python -m src.schedule.cli query \
  --target-school "University of California, Los Angeles" \
  --target-major "Computer Science" \
  --term "Summer 2026" \
  --cc-id 2 \
  --requirement "MATH 31B"

College selection: Default --cc-id is 0 (omit the flag): query all catalog-backed community colleges that appear in the articulation result. Use a nonzero --cc-id to pin one college. --cc-name accepts a case-insensitive substring of a catalog college name and must match exactly one entry (otherwise the CLI errors). --cc-name cannot be used together with a nonzero --cc-id.

uv run python -m src.schedule.cli query \
  --target-school "University of California, Los Angeles" \
  --target-major "Computer Science" \
  --term "Summer 2026" \
  --cc-name "West Valley" \
  --requirement "MATH 31B"

Current v1 scope:

• Canonical term input is a human label like "Summer 2026" (strict Spring|Summer|Fall YYYY).
• Schedule request failures are fail-soft per course (offered=false, error marker in raw_summary).

Supported colleges and adapters (current):

Pilot set only; expect this list to expand.

College	cc_id	Adapter	Status
Evergreen Valley College	2	banner — Ellucian COLSS (PostSearchCriteria / Sections)	works
West Valley College	80	wvm_static — schedule.wvm.edu static JSON	works
Diablo Valley College	114	vsb_4cd — VSB api/class-data XML	works
Los Medanos College	61	vsb_4cd — VSB api/class-data XML	works
Contra Costa College	28	vsb_4cd — VSB api/class-data XML	works
Mount San Antonio College	62	banner_ssb_classic — old SSB REST API	works
City College of San Francisco	33	banner_ssb_classic — old SSB REST API (port 8105)	works
Los Angeles City College	3	banner — (LACCD schedule likely not Banner)	broken
College of Marin	4	marin_colleague — public ASP.NET schedule grid	works
College of San Mateo	5	smcccd_colleague — SMCCD schedule API (/courses)	needs creds

banner_ssb_classic resolves term codes dynamically via getTerms (each institution uses a different numeric suffix scheme). Raw snippets only when SCHEDULE_DEBUG_RAW_SUMMARY=1.

vsb_4cd uses the Visual Schedule Builder (vsb.4cd.edu) shared by Diablo Valley, Los Medanos, and Contra Costa colleges. Term codes are derived deterministically (YYYY + 10/20/30 for Summer/Fall/Spring). Campus filtering is applied per-block using the locations field.

smcccd_colleague uses the documented SMCCD API surface. The public docs expose /courses, but live responses require Basic Auth credentials; configure SMCCD_API_USERNAME and SMCCD_API_PASSWORD to enable live schedule pulls.