How I built this

Semester HQ is a portfolio project by Regan Hinton — a small, real product built to show how I work: design decisions first, then an AI-accelerated build.

Design first

Before writing any code, I decided what this product should be: not another full planner, but a calm answer to one question — what does my week actually look like? That decision shaped everything else: a dashboard as the front door, a guided first run instead of a manual, and empty states that tell you what to do next. The visual identity was designed as a token system — warm paper surfaces, an evergreen accent, Space Grotesk and Inter — with every text-and-background pair checked against WCAG AA and the six course colors validated for color-blind separation before a single component was styled.

Built with Claude Code

I built the app in partnership with Claude Code, working from a written plan. The AI accelerated the parts that are slow by hand — scaffolding, the calendar math and its edge-case tests, and automated accessibility audits on every view in both themes. The product decisions stayed human: what to build, what to leave out, how the interface should feel, and when "done" was actually done. The result is plain HTML, CSS, and JavaScript — no framework, no build step, and the whole thing ships as four small static files.

Honest limits

Your data lives in this browser's local storage — no account, no server of mine. You can install the app on your phone straight from the browser (Share → Add to Home Screen on iPhone, Install on Android) and it works offline. To keep devices in sync, the optional Sync button connects to a private gist on your own GitHub account; otherwise the Download backup button saves a file you can restore anywhere.

— Regan Hinton · reganhinton.com · source on GitHub