AutoAssign

Assignment Creator UI
AutoGrader UI
Easy to organize Assignment Manager

Inspiration

Teachers spend countless hours creating worksheets, organizing assignments, and grading student submissions. We wanted to build something that removes that workload completely — something fast, intuitive, and powerful enough to feel like a true assistant. AutoAssign was inspired by the idea that AI should save teachers time, not add complexity.

What it does

AutoAssign lets teachers:

Organize assignments through a clean, IntelliJ-style planner
Generate AI-powered worksheets with custom topics, difficulty levels, and question counts
Export polished, classroom-ready PDFs
Upload completed student worksheets and automatically generate AI-written performance summaries
Seamlessly switch between planning, creating, and grading workflows

Everything happens inside a simple desktop app designed to feel fast, modern, and distraction-free.

How we built it

AutoAssign was built using:

Java 17 for the core application
Swing + FlatLaf for a modern UI experience
Apache PDFBox for PDF creation
Google Gemini API for worksheet generation and student performance analysis
Gson for JSON parsing
A hierarchical planner system modeled after IntelliJ’s project tree

We designed a full assignment workflow: planning → creation → editing → exporting → grading.

Challenges we ran into

Ensuring the AI always returned clean, valid JSON (no LaTeX or markdown)
Converting AI-generated text into a properly formatted PDF
Designing a UI that feels modern despite using Swing
Handling file exports, tree navigation, nested folders, and drag-and-drop
Integrating the grading system without making the interface overwhelming
Making loading transitions feel polished and responsive

Accomplishments that we're proud of

A fully functioning AI worksheet generator with PDF output
A robust planner system with nested folders and drag-and-drop organization
Seamless navigation across the entire workflow
A working AI grader capable of summarizing student performance
A polished interface with smooth loading animations
Building everything within a fast-paced hackathon timeframe

What we learned

How to orchestrate multiple AI-driven components inside a desktop application
How to structure a large Swing project while keeping it maintainable
How to prompt AI models effectively for strict JSON output
How to design intuitive UIs for educators (not developers!)
The importance of polishing small details — like loading screens and naming — to make an app feel real