Cadent
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Cadent

Don't plan it. Don't look it up. Just start.

Cadent reads your actual course materials, the syllabus table and the announcement nobody re-read, and decides what today should contain. The plan is an output, not an input.

See it work

macOS, Apple silicon.

  • 47% of students have missed a deadline they never knew about
  • 0 answers it gives you that it cannot show you the sentence for
  • 2 days before a quiz, the study time is already on your plan
Get Cadent →

Exams

The quiz that was never on the calendar.

Nobody put this in Canvas as an assignment. It was one sentence in an announcement, posted four days earlier, in a class you already had. Cadent read it, worked out that it is an exam, and put the studying on your plan before you thought to.

Between 20% and 40% of students report test anxiety. A large part of it is not knowing, and the date is usually sitting somewhere you already had access to.

It reads between the lines

Half your deadlines never reach the assignments page.

They live in announcements and in syllabus prose: a canceled class, a step due in class this week for a project posted for next month. Cadent reads the sentences, not just the due-date fields, and keeps your plan true to them before you go looking.

  • Syllabi
  • Assignments
  • Announcements
  • Calendar events
  • Course files
  • Late policies

Ask Cadent

Tell it what you need. It does the moving.

Ask anything about any course: the policy buried in a syllabus, what a professor said in week two, what to start with. Answers come from your own courses, with the source attached.

Answers arrive with the sentence they came from. It will not push work past a deadline; it tells you when it can’t, and why. And every change it makes to your plan comes with Undo.

Accuracy

It would rather say nothing than guess.

Every sentence Cadent gives you is checked against your own materials before you see it. If it cannot point at the line, it does not say it, and it tells you what it could not find rather than filling the gap.

So when it says the essay is due Friday, the essay is due Friday. And when it cannot do what you asked, it says so. The plan never changes silently, and every change it does make has Undo.

Fast.

Answers come back instantly, so checking a rule takes less time than opening the syllabus.

It will not write your essays.

It breaks an essay into steps, finds the requirements and tells you when to start. It will not write a sentence of it. That is a permanent design decision.

An assistant you have to double-check is not saving you anything.

Overload

Some days are just too full. Say so.

Cadent notices before you do, and when you ask, it moves the things that can move, never the ones that cannot. Every change is one click to undo.

The quiz does not move. The reading does.

The actual problem

You are not disorganized.
Your information is.

Nearly half of college students have missed a deadline because the information was scattered across systems. Pathify survey

The deadline is on Canvas. The change to that deadline is in an announcement you scrolled past. The formatting rule is on page 4 of a course file. The thing that decides your grade is one sentence in a syllabus you read in August.

So you do the work before the work: hunt it down, figure out what each thing needs, guess how long it takes, pick what comes first. Then something changes, and you do it all again, usually late at night.

Meet Cadent. It does the work before the work.

Sunday, 9 p.m.

Tomorrow is already decided. You look at it once and close the laptop.

Wednesday

A deadline moved in an announcement. Your plan moved with it, and shows you what changed.

Three weeks out

Midterm week is already visible, while there is still time to move something.

Breaks it down

A two-week project becomes Tuesday’s 45 minutes.

Give Cadent something big and vague and it becomes small and concrete: steps with time attached, spread across the days you actually have.

Today

Open it. Today is already decided.

Open Cadent and today is already decided: what to do, in what order, and how long each thing takes. Getting started stops being a decision.

Your calendar on the left, your work on the right. One day, seen both ways. It finds your class times, office hours and events from your courses, so the day it plans is the day you actually have.

Overview

See the week before it happens to you.

When too much lands on one day, Cadent says so early, while there is still time to move something. It will not fold eleven hours of work into a seven-hour day and let you find out at midnight.

What needs your attention comes first and carries a count; on a calm day it disappears entirely. The calendar lays the week out a day per row, so a heavy stretch is visible before it arrives.

Every source, one plan

Your work is spread across four sites. Your plan shouldn’t be.

Canvas has the syllabus. Gradescope has the problem sets. Connect and Achieve have the homework that actually counts. Four logins, four sets of deadlines, and no single place that shows you the week. Cadent reads all of them and builds one plan.

  • Canvas

    Courses, assignments, announcements, due dates and your class schedule. Re-checks itself through the day, so a new assignment is on your plan before you hear about it.

  • Gradescope

    Problem sets and their real deadlines, imported the moment you open it.

  • McGraw-Hill Connect

    Homework and due dates, in with everything else rather than in a tab you forget.

  • Macmillan Achieve

    Assignments and deadlines, captured the same way.

  • Your syllabus

    Upload the PDF and Cadent reads the deadlines out of the sentences, not just the fields.

  • Calendar files

    Import an .ics from your university, Google or Apple and your classes land in the same place.

  • WebAssignComing soon

  • PearsonComing soon

The publisher sites come in through a browser extension. Open a course page you’re already signed in to and it imports in one click; add a new source any time from Settings.

How it works

Set up once, guided the whole way.

  1. 1

    Download Cadent

    One file. Drag it into Applications.

  2. 2

    Connect your sources

    Setup walks you through Canvas, lets you pick which courses count, and installs the browser extension for Gradescope and your publisher sites.

  3. 3

    Watch it fill

    Courses land one by one as they import, so you can see it working before the app has even opened.

Privacy

Where your coursework lives.

Your coursework lives on your Mac, not on a server of mine. Nothing you give Cadent is kept anywhere else: not your courses, not your tokens. The browser extension sends your coursework to the app on your own computer and nowhere else, and it never touches your passwords.

Cadent is local-first, not local-only. Your library stays on your Mac; the reasoning runs in the cloud.

Read the full privacy commitment →

Questions

Will it run on my Mac?

If it is an M1 or newer running macOS 13 or later, yes. Cadent is Apple silicon only and will not run on an Intel Mac.

Does this work with my school?

Canvas connects with your institution's Canvas address and an access token you generate yourself, which setup walks you through. Gradescope, McGraw-Hill Connect and Macmillan Achieve come in through the browser extension and work wherever you can sign in.

Some universities turn off personal Canvas tokens. To check yours:

  1. Sign in to Canvas in your browser.
  2. Click Account in the left sidebar, then Settings.
  3. Scroll to Approved Integrations and look for a + New Access Token button.

If the button is there, you are good to go. If it is missing, your school has tokens turned off and Cadent cannot read your Canvas courses yet, though Gradescope, Connect and Achieve still work.

What do I have to give it?

Your Canvas address and an access token you generate yourself, which takes about a minute and is guided. For Gradescope, Connect and Achieve you give it nothing: the extension reads the pages you are already signed in to.

Does it show my grades?

No. Cadent reads what you've submitted so it knows what's already done and stops planning around it. It is not a grade tracker.

Will it write my essays?

No. Cadent will break an essay into steps, find the requirements, and tell you when to start. It will not write a sentence of it. That is a permanent design decision.

Is my data private?

Your library is stored encrypted on your Mac. To answer a question or build your plan, only the relevant excerpts are shared with a cloud AI provider, and nothing is stored along the way. Your database and your Canvas token never leave your Mac.

How is this different from a to-do app or an AI calendar?

A to-do app stores what you type. An AI calendar schedules what you already listed. Cadent starts a step earlier: it reads your actual course materials, works out what each commitment requires, and decides what today should contain. The plan is an output, not an input.

What if it gets something wrong?

Every substantive answer carries the source sentence, so you can check it in one click. Cadent checks answers against your materials before you see them, and refuses ones it cannot back up. Plan changes are all reversible, and Overview keeps a record of every revision.

Is there a Windows or iPhone version?

Not yet. Cadent is built on a foundation that supports both, and the desktop app is where the work happens, so macOS comes first.

Who made this?

I did. I kept missing things that were sitting in Canvas the whole time, so I built this for my own classes and shared it with friends who had the same problem.

Connect your courses.
See what it already knows.

The plan is an output, not an input.

Apple silicon · macOS 13 or later