Makayla's Project Guide

Project: CLP Curator Category: Web App (Flask) + Data Science Last updated: April 14

Note: This guide is created based on the latest state of your project repository + any notes from our discussion. It may not always reflect the most up-to-date information.

Where You Are

You have a strong project idea: a web app that helps Furman students find CLP events that match their interests. Your spec is in good shape -- you have a clear description, concrete MVP features, and realistic stretch goals. Your journal has a solid first entry too.

What's missing right now is the scaffolding: your project doesn't have pyproject.toml, dependencies, or a running app yet. That's the priority before Thursday.

What We Talked About

We refined your MVP flow:

  1. Data pipeline -- Scrape or collect CLP event data from the CLP calendar, then use a script with an LLM to categorize events by topic. Export to a clean .csv that your web app can load.
  2. UX flow -- Pick topics → Show list → "Add this" button
  3. Flask app -- Show topic options, let the user pick, display a top picks list based on their choices.

Stretch: a browseable directory with links to speakers, topics, etc. that's more inspiring than the current listing.

Next Steps (Before Thursday)

These are the things to focus on to be ready for Checkpoint 1:

  1. Scaffold your project. Use this prompt with your agent:

    Read my project.spec.md and the Flask setup guide at
https://csc-121.path.app/unit-3/resources/flask-setup.guide.llm.md
Set up my project: initialize uv, install Flask and Pandas,
create the basic file structure, and build a minimal starting
point I can run.

  2. Get one tiny slice working. You don't need the full recommendation engine yet. A good first slice: a Flask page that loads your .csv and displays a list of CLP event titles. That proves your data-to-web pipeline works.

  3. Start your data file. Even a manually created .csv with 5-10 CLP events (title, date, description, topic) is enough for now. You can automate the scraping later.

  4. Update your journal. Write what you've done and what's next in the Checkpoint 1 section of project.journal.md.

  5. Commit and push. Make sure everything is on GitHub before Thursday.

Checkpoint 1 Readiness

By Thursday April 16th, you need:

Helpful Resources