Getting Started
StudBud connects to your Google Classroom account and gives you AI-powered tools to study smarter. Here's how to get going:
- 1Sign in with Google — Click the sign-in button on the landing page. StudBud requests read-only access to your Classroom courses, assignments, announcements, and materials. We never modify anything in your account.
- 2Sync your courses — After sign-in, hit Sync Courses. StudBud pulls in your courses, assignments, announcements, and materials from Google Classroom. A progress overlay shows you each step.
- 3Choose your courses — After your first sync, a selection modal lets you pick which courses to focus on. You can hide courses you don't need — they're still synced, just tucked away.
- 4Start studying — Use Chat to ask questions, Study Tools to generate flashcards and quizzes, or To-Do to track deadlines.
“I just signed in and synced — now I can ask the AI chat ‘What's due this week in Biology?’ and get an answer with links to the actual assignments.”
Dashboard
Your home base. See all your courses at a glance, track upcoming deadlines, and manage your data.
Course Cards
Each course shows its name, section, a breakdown of items (assignments, announcements, materials), and the next upcoming due date. Click any card to drill into the full course view.
Syncing
Sync is manual — tap Sync Courses whenever you want fresh data from Google Classroom. A step-by-step overlay shows progress as each course is fetched. Your existing data is never overwritten, only updated.
Due Soon
The top 5 upcoming assignments are shown with relative dates (“Today,” “Tomorrow,” “In 3 days”). Click any item to open it directly in Google Classroom.
Hide / Unhide Courses
Old or irrelevant courses? Hide them. They collapse into a “Hidden courses” section at the bottom and won't clutter your dashboard. Unhide anytime.
Add Files from Google Drive
Click Add Files to open the Google Drive Picker. Select PDFs, Docs, or Slides and StudBud will ingest their content so the AI can reference them in chat and study tools.
“I uploaded my professor's review sheet via Add Files, then asked the chat to summarize the key topics — it cited specific sections from the PDF.”
Courses
Click any course card from the dashboard to see its full contents.
Tabs
Three tabs organize your content: Assignments, Announcements, and Materials. Each shows a count so you know what's there at a glance.
Attachments & Ingestion
Each item can have attachments — Google Drive files, YouTube videos, or external links. Status badges show whether each attachment has been ingested:
- Done — content indexed and ready for AI
- Pending — not yet processed
- Failed — couldn't be processed (will retry on next ingest)
Ingest Materials
If you see a badge showing pending attachments, click Ingest Materials in the course header. StudBud processes Drive files and YouTube videos in batches of 5, extracting text and indexing it for AI search. It auto-continues until everything is processed.
Ask About This Course
Click Ask about this course to jump straight into a course-scoped chat. Answers will only reference materials from this specific course.
“I noticed my History course had 12 pending attachments. I hit Ingest Materials, waited a minute, then asked the chat about the French Revolution — it pulled quotes directly from the lecture slides.”
AI Chat
Ask questions and get answers grounded in your actual course materials. StudBud uses retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to find relevant content before answering.
Two Scopes
- All Courses — Access from the Chat nav tab. Searches across every synced and ingested course.
- Single Course — Access from the “Ask about this course” button on a course page. Answers scoped to one course only.
Chat Modes
- Courses mode — Answers come from your synced content. You'll see source citations (assignment titles, announcement text, document excerpts) you can click to verify.
- General mode — Uses the AI's general knowledge for broader questions. Great for background concepts, definitions, or anything not in your course materials.
Source Citations
In courses mode, every answer includes expandable source chips showing exactly where the information came from — assignment titles, announcement text, document excerpts, or ingested file content. Click a source to see more detail.
“I asked ‘What are the requirements for the final project?’ in my CS course chat. It pulled the exact requirements from the assignment description and linked to the rubric PDF I had ingested.”
“I switched to General mode and asked ‘Explain the difference between TCP and UDP’ for background context that wasn't in my lecture notes.”
Conversation History
Every chat is automatically saved. The sidebar shows your recent conversations (up to 50), auto-titled from your first message. Click any conversation to pick up where you left off, or delete it with the trash icon.
Helpful Resources
When your question involves learning a concept, the AI appends a “Helpful Resources” section with curated external links — Khan Academy, YouTube channels, MIT OpenCourseWare, Coursera, and more. These appear in both Courses and General modes.
Follow-up Chips
After each response, quick-tap chips appear so you can keep the conversation going without typing. In Courses mode you'll see “Explain simpler,” “Give an example,” and “What else is related?” In General mode, “Go deeper” replaces the last chip.
Study Tools
Five AI-powered study tools, all generated from your actual course materials. Go to the Study tab, select a course, optionally enter a topic, and pick your tool.
Flashcards
AI generates question-and-answer cards from your course content. Cards flip with a smooth 3D animation.
On mobile, swipe left/right to navigate. Use the shuffle button to randomize order. A progress bar tracks how far you've gone, and a completion screen appears when you finish the deck.
“Before my Biology midterm, I generated flashcards on ‘cell division’ and flipped through them on my phone while commuting.”
Quiz
Multiple-choice questions with instant feedback. After selecting an answer, you see whether you were right (green) or wrong (red), plus an explanation. Your score tracks in real time.
“I generated a quiz on ‘World War II causes’ for my History class. Got 7/10 — the explanations helped me understand what I missed.”
Practice Exam
A full exam with multiple sections, mixing multiple-choice and short-answer questions. Each question shows its point value. After submitting, you get a detailed results breakdown with AI explanations for every question.
“I used the practice exam the night before my Chemistry final. It had a mix of formula recall (short answer) and concept questions (MC). The grading breakdown showed exactly where I needed to review.”
Study Plan
Generates a day-by-day study schedule based on your course content. Each day has focused tasks with time estimates and resource references. The AI factors in your upcoming assignment deadlines, prioritizing topics with the soonest due dates. Check off tasks as you complete them and watch the progress bar fill.
“Two weeks before finals, I generated a study plan for my Psychology course. It broke everything into manageable 45-minute blocks across 5 days, referencing specific lecture materials each day.”
Concept Map
Visualizes how topics in your course connect. Concepts are grouped into clusters with labeled relationships. Click any concept to highlight its connections — unrelated concepts fade out so you can see the relationships clearly.
“I generated a concept map for ‘machine learning’ in my CS class. Clicking ‘neural networks’ highlighted connections to ‘gradient descent,’ ‘backpropagation,’ and ‘loss functions’ — super helpful for seeing the big picture.”
To-Do
All your upcoming assignments in one place, pulled from Google Classroom.
Two Views
- By Priority — Groups items into Past Due, Today, This Week, Next Week, and Later. Past due items are highlighted in red so nothing slips through.
- By Date — A calendar-style view grouped by exact date, showing due times for each item.
Task Breakdowns
Click Break down on any assignment and the AI generates a step-by-step plan with time estimates for each step. Great for big projects that feel overwhelming.
“My research paper felt huge and vague. I hit Break down and got 6 clear steps: find sources (30 min), outline (20 min), draft intro (25 min), etc. Made it feel completely manageable.”
Settings
Account Overview
At the top of Settings you’ll see your account snapshot: email address, member-since date, number of courses synced, and total items imported. A quick way to confirm everything is connected.
Sign Out
Logs you out without deleting anything. All your courses, study tools, and synced data are preserved. Sign back in anytime to pick up where you left off.
Disconnect & Delete Everything
The nuclear option. This permanently:
- Revokes Google OAuth access
- Deletes all courses, items, and attachments
- Deletes all document chunks and AI embeddings
- Deletes your account
This cannot be undone. Both actions require explicit confirmation before proceeding.
Privacy & Security
StudBud is built with privacy as a core principle, not an afterthought.
- ✓Read-only access — StudBud never modifies your Google Classroom, Drive, or Calendar data. Ever.
- ✓No grades or submissions — We never fetch, store, or display your grades, scores, or submitted work.
- ✓AES-256 encryption — Your Google refresh token is encrypted at rest using AES-256-GCM.
- ✓Secure sessions — HTTP-only, encrypted cookies. No passwords stored (OAuth only).
- ✓One-click deletion — Delete all your data and revoke Google access instantly from Settings.
- ✓No data selling — Your information is never shared with advertisers or third parties for marketing.
For full details, see our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.
Tips & Tricks
- 01Ingest before you ask. The AI can only reference content that's been ingested. After syncing a course, visit the course page and click Ingest Materials to process Drive files and YouTube videos.
- 02Use course-scoped chat for precision. If you're studying for a specific class, use the course-scoped chat (from the course page) instead of the all-courses chat. You'll get more focused, relevant answers.
- 03Leave the topic blank for broader coverage. When generating study tools, leaving the topic field empty lets the AI cover the entire course. Enter a specific topic to narrow the focus.
- 04Break down big assignments. Use the Task Breakdown feature on the To-Do page to turn overwhelming projects into bite-sized steps with time estimates.
- 05Add your own files. The Google Drive Picker on the dashboard lets you add study guides, textbook excerpts, or notes that aren't part of your Classroom materials. Once ingested, the AI can reference them too.
- 06Use flashcard keyboard shortcuts on desktop. ← → to navigate, Enter to flip, Space for next. Much faster than clicking.
- 07Sync regularly. StudBud doesn't auto-sync. Hit the Sync button on the dashboard periodically (especially before exams) to pull in the latest assignments and materials.
- 08Practice exams are your secret weapon before finals. The practice exam tool generates multi-section exams with both MC and short-answer questions, then grades them with detailed explanations. Use it the night before.