What can you ask
OpenMind?
Copy any prompt and paste it into OpenMind. Or just use them as inspiration.
Each category explains what it does, what powers it, and what setup is needed.
📚 Deadlines & Assignments
OpenMind fetches all your upcoming assignments from bCourses and sorts them by what actually matters — a 30% midterm due Friday outranks a 1% attendance quiz due tomorrow. It checks submission status too, so you never miss a deadline without knowing.
Setup: Works out of the box — just needs your bCourses connection.
“What's due this week?”
Priority-sorted deadlines across all courses
“What's due for NLP?”
Assignments for a specific course
“Am I missing anything?”
Check for unsubmitted past-due assignments
“What's the most important thing I should work on right now?”
Priority scoring by urgency × grade weight
“What assignments are worth the most in Finance?”
Grade weight breakdown
“Do I have anything due tomorrow?”
Urgent deadline check
“Show me everything due in the next 2 weeks”
Extended deadline view
“What did I submit this week?”
Submission status review
📊 Grades & GPA
See your current grades across all courses, calculate exactly what you need on the final to hit your target, and identify which classes need the most attention. OpenMind pulls real-time grade data from bCourses and does the math for you using actual assignment weights.
Setup: Works out of the box — just needs your bCourses connection.
“What are my grades?”
Current grade for every course
“What do I need on the final to get an A in Finance?”
Grade calculation with assignment weights
“What's my worst grade right now?”
Identify courses that need attention
“If I skip the writing prompt, what happens to my grade?”
What-if scenario
“What assignments can I afford to do poorly on?”
Low-impact assignment identification
“Which class needs the most attention right now?”
Compare current grades and workload
“Which course is dragging down my average?”
Spot the weakest current grade
📖 Readings & PDFs
OpenMind fetches your course module pages from bCourses, finds the readings, and actually reads them — downloading PDFs, extracting text from lecture slides, and fetching web articles. It summarizes each reading so you know the key arguments before class.
Setup: Works out of the box. PDF extraction uses pymupdf (bundled).
“What readings for Info Law this week?”
Fetch and summarize weekly readings
“Summarize the NLP lecture 7 slides”
Download PDF, extract text, summarize
“Summarize this article: [URL]”
Fetch and summarize any web article
“What are the key arguments in the Barocas paper?”
Deep reading summary
“Compare this week's readings across my courses”
Cross-course reading overview
“Summarize this week's NLP readings”
Module and reading summary
“Make a one-page summary of all readings for the midterm”
Consolidated study material
✍️ Assignment Help
OpenMind reads the full assignment description and rubric from bCourses, then gives you specific guidance — what the professor is looking for, how to structure your response, and which rubric points to focus on. If you have a profile, it connects the assignment to your experience.
Setup: Works out of the box. Even better with a profile (openmind setup profile).
“Help me with the NLP midterm report”
Reads the prompt + rubric, gives specific guidance
“What does the rubric say for the Big Data paper?”
Rubric breakdown
“Draft an outline for the Info Law lab”
Rubric-based outline generation
“What format does the professor want for this essay?”
Format requirements extraction
“What's the word count for the Social Issues prompt?”
Assignment requirements
“Check if my outline covers all rubric points”
Rubric alignment check
“What are the most common mistakes on this type of assignment?”
Proactive guidance
🎓 Teach Me
Interactive learning from your actual course materials — not generic knowledge. OpenMind finds the relevant lecture slides or readings, explains one concept at a time with analogies, asks you real scenario questions, and adjusts based on your answers. It connects everything back to your assignments.
Setup: Works out of the box. Uses your course materials from bCourses.
“Teach me about attention mechanisms from NLP”
Step-by-step interactive teaching
“Explain algorithmic fairness like I'm five”
Simplified concept explanation
“I don't understand transformers”
Start from basics, build up
“Quiz me on NLP lectures 6-9”
Practice questions from course content
“Continue where we left off”
Resume previous study session
“Explain this concept using a real-world analogy”
Analogy-based learning
“What's the difference between supervised and unsupervised learning?”
Comparison-based teaching
“Give me 5 practice problems on regression”
Practice problem generation
🃏 Flashcards & Study
Generate flashcards from your actual lecture slides and readings — not generic study material. OpenMind reads the PDF, extracts the key concepts, and creates Q&A pairs. If Obsidian is connected, it saves them to your vault.
Setup: Works out of the box. Obsidian integration optional for saving.
“Make flashcards for NLP lecture 7”
Q&A pairs from lecture content
“Make flashcards for algorithmic fairness”
Concept-based flashcards
“Quiz me on these flashcards”
Interactive flashcard review
“Prepare me for the Social Issues midterm”
Study guide from course materials
“What topics will be on the final?”
Syllabus-based topic extraction
“Create a cheat sheet for the NLP midterm”
Key formulas and definitions
🚀 Career & Skills
OpenMind compares what you have (your skills, experience, projects from your profile) against what you need (based on your career goals and target companies). It identifies specific gaps and recommends Berkeley courses, projects, or resources to fill them. This is the most powerful feature when your profile is set up.
Setup: Requires a profile: openmind setup profile. Much better with resume data.
“What skills am I missing for AI PM roles?”
Skill gap analysis from profile
“What CS courses should I take for AI?”
Course recommendations based on goals
“Based on my profile, what should I focus on for AI PM roles?”
Profile-based career guidance
“What should I focus on to get into Google?”
Company-specific career advice
“What classes would help me get into a PhD program?”
Academic career planning
“Which Berkeley classes fit my interests and career goals best?”
Profile-based course matching
“What electives complement my major?”
Cross-disciplinary course suggestions
“What projects should I build for my portfolio?”
Project recommendations based on skills
“How does my coursework compare to typical AI PM job requirements?”
Career-course alignment
📘 Course Catalog
Search across 11,169 Berkeley courses (6,771 undergraduate + 4,398 graduate) from 240 departments. The catalog is bundled with OpenMind — no network request needed. Filter by subject, level, or keyword. See course descriptions, units, prerequisites, and terms offered.
Setup: Works out of the box. Catalog is bundled with the package.
“Search for machine learning courses”
Keyword search across 11K courses
“What INFO courses are available?”
Department-specific listing
“Show me graduate-level data science courses”
Level-filtered search
“What are the prerequisites for CS 189?”
Course detail lookup
“What departments offer AI-related courses?”
Cross-department search
“List all subjects available at Berkeley”
Full department listing (240)
“What 3-unit courses are in the iSchool?”
Filtered course search
🏛️ Campus Life
Live campus data from Berkeley's official sources. Events come from events.berkeley.edu's JSON API (lectures, concerts, career fairs, sports). Library hours are scraped from lib.berkeley.edu. Study room links go directly to LibCal for booking.
Setup: Works out of the box. All data is fetched live from Berkeley's public sources.
“What's happening on campus this week?”
Live events from events.berkeley.edu
“Any featured events today?”
Highlighted campus events
“Is Doe Library open right now?”
Library hours lookup
“I need a study room in Main Stacks”
LibCal booking link
“What lectures are happening this week?”
Academic events filter
“Any concerts or performances coming up?”
Arts events
“What sports events are this weekend?”
Athletic events
💬 Email & Slack
Search and read your Gmail and Slack messages without leaving the terminal. Useful for checking professor emails, TA announcements in course Slack channels, or assignment feedback. Both are strictly read-only — OpenMind can never send, post, or delete anything.
Setup: Requires setup: openmind setup gmail and/or openmind setup slack
“Check my email for anything from professors”
Gmail search by sender
“Did my NLP professor reply?”
Professor email check
“Summarize my unread emails”
Email summary
“Any updates in the NLP Slack?”
Slack channel reader
“What did the TA say about the midterm in Slack?”
Slack message search
“Search Slack for 'office hours'”
Keyword search across channels
📆 Calendar & Tasks
Add assignment deadlines to your Google Calendar with one command, or create individual study blocks. Todoist integration syncs your Canvas assignments as tasks with due dates. Calendar is the one integration that can write — it creates events when you ask.
Setup: Requires setup: openmind setup calendar and/or openmind setup todoist
“Add my deadlines to Google Calendar”
Bulk-sync Canvas assignments
“Block 2 hours tomorrow for the midterm”
Create study time event
“What's on my calendar this week?”
Calendar overview
“Add my assignments to Todoist”
Task sync with due dates
“What's in my Todoist?”
Active task list
“Add task: review NLP slides by Friday”
Manual task creation
📓 Obsidian Notes
Save reading summaries, assignment outlines, and flashcards directly to your Obsidian vault. OpenMind writes structured markdown files with wiki-style [[links]] between notes. Search your vault by filename or content to find past summaries.
Setup: Requires setup: openmind setup obsidian (provide your vault path)
“Save this reading summary to Obsidian”
Write to Readings/ folder
“Search my notes for 'fairness'”
Vault search by content
“Create an assignment outline in Obsidian”
Structured note generation
“Save these flashcards to my vault”
Flashcard export
“What notes do I have on transformers?”
Topic-based note search