SelfSemester

A Windows desktop app that turns any subject into a full university-style course: lessons, homework, quizzes, assignments and exams, released on a schedule with hard deadlines and real marks.

You name a subject. Claude asks a few questions about your goals and level, plans a syllabus, and tells you how well it can teach and mark that subject before you commit. Once you approve, it writes the whole course up front. After that the app runs the course on its own: it releases material day by day, enforces deadlines, auto-marks quizzes, and sends written work and photos of handwritten working back to Claude for marking against a rubric. Final marks go on a transcript, and finished courses are archived to your Documents folder.

You can also write a course yourself in the course builder, with no Claude at all, and run it on the same schedule. What changed in each version is in CHANGELOG.md.

Status: early (0.4.0). It works end to end but has had little real-world use. Expect rough edges.

Latest update (November 2026)

Version 0.4.1 is a security update: I updated the framework the app is built on after GitHub flagged a few issues in it. Nothing changes in how the app works, and your courses carry over like always.

Version 0.4.0 is out, and you can now download a ready-made installer. Updating keeps all your courses and progress, and SelfSemester backs up your data before every update just in case.

In 0.3.0, courses started to feel a lot more like actual school: every course has its own classroom with a home page, weekly modules, a syllabus, a gradebook and a materials tab, plus next and previous buttons on lessons. The course builder got the details a real course has too: course code, term, instructor, colour, a welcome message, learning outcomes and weekly objectives.

What came in 0.2.0:

• Add your own stuff to a course: notes, PDFs, images. Claude uses them when it builds and marks the course.
• Sandbox mode: retry as many times as you want, no late penalties. Structured mode is still there if you want it to feel like a real course.
• Instant feedback on multiple choice and number questions the moment you submit.
• Review with Claude: ask about your mark and the feedback on anything you've handed in.
• Course builder: write your own course without Claude and run it the same way.

The full list is in the changelog.

Screenshots

Your courses, laid out like school

Shown with made-up demo courses written in the course builder (the names in them are invented).

Courses: a card for each course with its code, instructor, progress and mark	Course home: a welcome, how the course works, what's coming up and recent marks
Modules: every week has the same shape: objectives, a lesson, then the work	Syllabus: description, learning outcomes, schedule, grading and policies
Grades: current mark, how much is decided, averages by category	Course builder: write your own course in four steps, with a live preview
Sandbox: try again as often as you like; the answer key stays hidden until you ask for it

Courses Claude writes

Shown with a one-week "Git basics" course that Claude generated for a test run (example names in it are made up).

Plan review: syllabus, pacing and honest accuracy estimates before anything is built	Building: each unit is written, then checked by a second model
Today: what's due, what's new, what's been marked	Lesson: full self-study lessons, with a distraction-free reading mode
Assignment: deadline, points and share of the final grade	Quiz: marked instantly, with the right answer explained for each miss
First launch: the terms every user accepts

Requirements

To build from source instead of downloading the installer, you also need Node.js 22.17+, Rust 1.85+ and the Visual Studio C++ build tools (see Install).

Before you use it

• Cost. SelfSemester itself is free. Signed in with a Claude subscription, Claude Code adds no extra charges. If Claude Code is signed in with an API key instead, every call is billed to that key; the Settings page tells you which one you're using.
• Usage limits. Building a course is heavy work: roughly one call per stage plus two per unit, with each unit taking a few minutes. A long course can use a large share of your plan's limits. When a limit is reached, the app pauses and tries again at the reset time Claude Code reports (or at least every hour). If your limit has reset sooner, press Resume now. A progress bar shows roughly how long building or marking has left, based on how long each step has taken before on your computer.
• Keep the app open while a course is building. Building, releases, deadline checks and reminders only run while the window is open. Anything that fell due while it was closed is settled the next time you open it.
• AI teaching and marking can be wrong. Before you enrol, each course shows a readiness report with honest estimates for every step; none is ever 100%. A second model checks each unit, but mistakes can still get through. Every mark shows its reasoning and the answer key, so you can check it.
• Not a qualification. Transcripts record your own study. They aren't accredited and shouldn't be presented as if they were.
• Sealed files keep honest people honest. Answer keys and unreleased exams are encrypted on disk, but the key is on the same computer. It stops accidental peeking, not someone set on cheating on their own course.
• Sources. Claude prefers free and openly licensed material (OpenStax, MIT OpenCourseWare, LibreTexts, official docs) and marks anything paid as "get this yourself". The app never bypasses paywalls. Lessons are written in Claude's own words and link to their sources; keep generated courses for your own study.
• Supported work types today: typed answers (Markdown and LaTeX), photo or PDF uploads, and auto-marked quizzes. Courses that would need audio, camera or code-running checks are planned without those parts for now.
• Your own materials: each course page has a "Your materials" section where you can add reference files (PDFs, text, notes, code), images and typed notes. Claude reads them when it plans the course, writes each unit and marks your work, so add them before you approve a course if you want every unit to use them.
• Structured or Sandbox: chosen when you enrol. Structured gives one attempt per assessment and applies the late policy. Sandbox lets you resubmit as often as you like with no late penalties, and keeps the answer key hidden until you choose to see it (which closes that item). Sandbox courses are marked as such on the transcript.
• Instant feedback and review: multiple-choice and numeric answers are checked the moment you submit, while Claude marks the rest. Every marked item has a Review with Claude thread to go over the questions, feedback and mark in depth; Claude can explain a mark but not change it.
• A classroom for every course: a home page with what's next and what's due, weekly modules with objectives, a syllabus, a gradebook and your materials, the same layout for every course.
• Course builder: write the syllabus, lessons, questions, answer keys and rubrics yourself. Multiple-choice and numeric questions are marked by the app and you mark written answers against your own key, so these courses never call Claude. A draft can be exported to a plain folder, edited in any text editor and imported back.

Privacy

Everything stays on your computer. The app has no server and no account system. The only thing that talks to the internet is your Claude Code, which sends course prompts, your course materials, your submitted work and review questions to Anthropic to generate and mark courses, under your agreement with Anthropic. SelfSemester never reads, stores or sends your Claude sign-in. Courses you write in the course builder never leave your computer, unless you ask Claude about one