Nexus AI

Nexus AI is a student career operating system for college students preparing for internships, fellowships, and early-career opportunities. It brings applications, certifications, projects, networking, interview prep, resume notes, goals, readiness scoring, and coaching into one organized workspace.

IBM SkillsBuild AI Builders Challenge

Nexus AI was submitted and published for the July 2026 IBM SkillsBuild AI Builders Challenge. The challenge version frames Nexus as an AI-assisted career readiness coach for students.

Challenge materials:

• Published Challenge Page
• Public Demo Video
• IBM SkillsBuild Credential
• IBM AI Builders Submission Notes
• IBM Demo Video Script
• IBM Submission Checklist

Challenge pitch:

Nexus AI helps college students turn scattered internship preparation into a trackable career workspace with readiness scoring, skill-gap analysis, priority alerts, and weekly next actions.

Live Links

• Live App
• Live App With Render Backend
• Backend Health Check
• Portfolio Case Study
• Portfolio

Problem

Students often manage career preparation across scattered tools: job boards, spreadsheets, notes apps, resume drafts, calendar reminders, saved links, and disconnected advice. That makes it hard to know what is urgent, what proof is missing, and what to do next.

Nexus AI turns that scattered workflow into a single dashboard where a student can track progress, save evidence, compare readiness, and generate a weekly action plan.

What It Does

• Starts every new user with a blank workspace and guided onboarding
• Lets users optionally load generic demo data for exploration
• Tracks applications, certifications, projects, networking, interviews, skills, goals, and resume notes
• Scores career readiness from workspace activity and proof
• Compares saved skills against a target role
• Generates priority alerts for overdue items, thin pipelines, missing project links, and role-fit gaps
• Produces weekly action plans with priority, reason, timing, and next steps
• Exports and imports workspace snapshots as JSON
• Connects a GitHub Pages frontend to an optional FastAPI backend on Render

Privacy And First-Run Behavior

Nexus AI should never open with a real person's profile as the default workspace.

• New users start with blank profile fields
• Name, email, major, target role, graduation, and weekly hours are not prefilled
• Demo data only appears after clicking Load Demo Data
• Local mode stores data in the user's browser with localStorage
• Backend mode syncs workspace data only when the Render API is selected or detected
• The live backend reset endpoint clears the shared demo workspace

Project Snapshot

Area	Details
Status	Flagship portfolio product and startup exploration
Users	College students preparing for internships and early-career roles
Frontend	HTML, CSS, JavaScript, localStorage
Backend	Python, FastAPI, SQLite
Deployment	GitHub Pages frontend, Render backend
Core Product Value	Career workspace, readiness scoring, and next-step planning

Demo Walkthrough

Feature Modules

Module	Purpose
Dashboard	Shows readiness score, alerts, recent activity, deadlines, and next actions
Onboarding	Helps a first-time user set target role, major, graduation, weekly focus hours, and primary goal
Applications	Tracks company, role, status, deadline, link, and next action
Certifications	Tracks provider, progress, target date, and credential links
Projects	Stores project stack, stage, public links, and impact statements
Networking	Tracks people, organizations, status, follow-up dates, and message context
Interviews	Tracks target roles, companies, interview type, date, and practice focus
Skills Lab	Stores skills, confidence levels, categories, and proof
Resume	Saves resume notes and generates coaching suggestions from workspace data
Goals	Tracks career goals, categories, progress, deadlines, and next steps
Case Study	Documents the product problem, system design, roadmap, and build evidence

Architecture

GitHub Pages frontend
  |
  | optional API connection
  v
FastAPI backend on Render
  |
  v
SQLite workspace database

The app works in two modes:

• Local mode: uses browser localStorage and can be opened directly from GitHub Pages.
• API mode: connects to the Render backend for CRUD operations, readiness analytics, reports, import/export, and reset.

Backend API

Method	Endpoint	Purpose
GET	/health	Verify API status, version, configured origins, and collections
GET	/snapshot	Return full workspace state
GET	/analytics/readiness	Return readiness score and target-role skill gap analysis
GET	/workspace/report	Return backend-generated summary, alerts, weekly actions, readiness, and skill gaps
PUT	/profile	Update profile fields
PUT	/resume	Update saved resume notes
GET	/{collection}	List records in a workspace collection
POST	/{collection}	Create a record
PUT	/{collection}/{item_id}	Edit a record
DELETE	/{collection}/{item_id}	Delete a record
POST	/workspace/import	Import a JSON workspace snapshot
DELETE	/workspace/reset	Clear the workspace

Supported collections: applications, certifications, projects, skills, networking, interviews, and goals.

Tech Stack

• HTML
• CSS
• JavaScript
• Python
• FastAPI
• SQLite
• Render
• GitHub Pages

What Reviewers Should Notice

• Full-stack product direction with a usable frontend and deployed backend
• Blank first-run workflow instead of personal default data
• CRUD API design for career-workspace collections
• Relational data modeling with SQLite
• Readiness analytics tied to applications, skills, projects, goals, networking, and deadlines
• Product thinking around student career workflows
• Clear roadmap toward authentication, PostgreSQL, private accounts, and real AI coaching

Run Locally

Open the static app:

python -m http.server 8070

Then visit:

http://127.0.0.1:8070/

Run the backend:

cd backend
python -m venv .venv
.venv\Scripts\activate
pip install -r requirements.txt
uvicorn main:app --reload

Then visit:

http://127.0.0.1:8000/docs

Use the frontend with the local API:

http://127.0.0.1:8070/?api=http://127.0.0.1:8000

Tests And Checks

Run the backend API contract test:

python -m pytest backend/test_api_contract.py

Run the SQLite smoke test:

python backend/smoke_test.py

Check the deployed backend:

https://nexus-ai-api-upkl.onrender.com/health

Portfolio Materials

• Architecture
• Deployment Guide
• Auth and PostgreSQL Plan
• Roadmap
• Demo Script
• Demo Video Script
• Resume Entry
• Security Policy
• Privacy Notes

Roadmap

• Add authentication with Clerk or Firebase
• Move production persistence from SQLite to PostgreSQL
• Add private user accounts and role-based access controls
• Connect CareerLens recommendations into Nexus skill planning
• Add LLM-powered resume feedback and weekly coaching
• Add frontend unit tests and broader backend coverage
• Add mentor/peer feedback workflows