gridworks

Building Gridworks started with a frustration every student knows too well: trying to decipher chaotic, messy class schedule PDFs. I wanted to turn that manual headache into a seamless, one-click experience. Developing it meant diving headfirst into client-side document processing, leveraging pdf.js to parse raw, unpredictable layout structures and extract clean time slots, course codes, and room assignments.

The real engineering challenge was wrangling irregular PDF formatting and variable text streams into structured, reliable state without server-side lag. From architecting the parsing logic to polishing an intuitive, responsive frontend that instantly renders the parsed data into clean timetable views, every iteration focused on speed and reliability. Taking Gridworks from an everyday student annoyance to a deployed, full-stack utility proved how rewarding it is to build lightweight tools that solve genuine, day-to-day workflow bottlenecks.