The student action platform

College is complicated. Your path should not be.

Semester brings your plan, courses, schedule, goals and next steps into one clear workspace, so you can see what matters, act with confidence, and stay in control of your information.

Start planning free → Request an invite

Private beta: sign-up may ask for an invite. Already have an account? Log in

Demo — fictional data, no sign-in → Open the app demo (fictional data) ↗ Semester for institutions →

Private by design · Source-aware · Built for accessibility

Semester's Today screen showing the day's classes and next actions

Product screenshot · illustrative data

Start here · What brings you to Semester?

Your choice only changes the suggestion here. It isn't stored or used for targeting.

Plan your pathPrepare for registrationLearn from approved sourcesBuild momentumKeep control of your data

The problem

College information is spread across a dozen systems.

Students need one clear next step, not another portal. Staff spend hours rebuilding context that already exists somewhere else.

LMSStudent portalDegree auditRegistrationCourse catalogEmailAdvising notesCalendarSyllabus PDFsGroup chatsCareer siteCampus events

↓ Semester reads approved sources and explains them

Today · Tuesday

Registration opens Friday. Two backups still need saving.

Registrar · synced 2h agoYour planIllustrative demo data

Why Semester exists

I did not build Semester because college lacked information. I built it because students cannot always find, trust, and act on it.

Harrison RubinFounder, Semester

As a transfer student navigating two schools—and as someone with dyslexia—I experienced how hard it can be to hold together requirements, deadlines, portals, course systems, emails, and support resources. The information was there, but it was not connected in a way that made the next step clear.

Semester is built to change that.

Read the founder's letter

How it works for a student

From “what's due?” to “what's next?”

One briefing for the day.

Classes, deadlines and the single most useful next action, pulled from your syllabi and connected calendars.

Syllabus upload extracts every deadline for you to confirm
Deadlines sorted by when to start, not only when they're due
Quiet hours and reminder frequency are yours to set

TodayIllustrative demo data

ECON 1010 · Problem set 4

Due Thu · start today (est. 2h)

Syllabus

BUS 1600 · Case memo draft

Due Mon · 40% done

You

Advising appointment

Fri 2:30 · agenda not started

Suggested

Why is this suggested?

Suggests: Start your advisor agenda today
Because: Your appointment is in 3 days and registration opens next week
Data used: Your calendar (connected) · registrar calendar (synced 2h ago)
Can't know: Whether you've already prepared somewhere else
Your controls: Dismiss · correct · view source · ask for help

Choose your path

Built for the student. Governed for the institution.

Students

Know what matters next.

Plan your path, prepare for registration and study from your own materials. Free to start.

Start planning free

Departments

Launch with one cohort.

Onboard a defined group of students with your resources, workflows and training.

Plan a department launch

Institutions

One governed layer.

Connect approved systems into a source-aware experience your SIS and LMS still own.

Plan an institutional launch

Enterprise

Governed scale.

Multi-campus governance, native LMS, migration and 24/7 critical support.

Request enterprise briefing

The trust model

Sources are visible. Estimates are clear. Privacy is controllable.

Every fact in Semester carries a label that says where it came from. That rule applies to this website too.

Security Privacy Accessibility AI governance

Official source

From an approved university system, with its freshness shown.

Student-entered

Something you added. Only you and people you share with can see it.

Estimate

Calculated by Semester, always with the assumptions behind it.

Illustrative demo data

Sample records on this site. Not a student record or institutional source.

Why this matters now

Students are telling us they're overwhelmed.

75%

of students report feeling overwhelmed by coursework and deadlines

55%

report symptoms of academic burnout

47.5%

say procrastination is a major obstacle

requested feature: one place for every deadline

Source: Inside Higher Ed × College Pulse Student Voice survey, as summarised in Semester's market analysis. Semester has no customer results yet; our first design-partner cohort will report outcomes with cohort, timeframe, method and limitations.

Become a design partner

We're selecting a small number of departments for the first cohort. You shape the product; we publish results only with your approval.

See the design partner program

Free tools

Useful before you ever sign up.

Registration readiness checklist

Ten checks to finish before your window opens.

Use the checklist →

Advisor agenda builder

Walk into advising with your questions already written.

Build an agenda →

Build my semester

Draft a weekly schedule and see conflicts and workload instantly.

Build a draft →

The whole relationship

From first visit to a safe exit, every stage has a page.

Semester on YouTube

Watch us build it. Out loud.

Short fixes for real college problems, product walkthroughs, and a build log that says what works today and what we're still building.

Watch on Semester Subscribe

First Shorts are produced and posting soon. Subscribe to get them first.

Make the next step clearer.

Start planning free Talk to Semester

Home / Solutions / Institutions

Semester for institutions

Give students one clear place to understand what matters and act safely.

Semester is the governed student action layer between your existing systems and the decisions students make. Your SIS, LMS, identity and official transaction systems stay authoritative.

Plan an institutional launch Estimate your launch Integrations directory

The institutional problem

Fragmented systems create unclear student decisions.

Fragmented systems

Students piece together answers from a dozen portals.

Staff rebuild context

Advisors spend appointments reconstructing where a student stands.

Unmanaged AI

Students already use AI tools with no institutional sources or policy.

Uneven experience

Outcomes depend on who knows which office to ask.

The Semester model

Connect, explain, guide, hand off, measure.

1 · Connect

Approved systems

SSO, SIS, LMS and calendars you approve, field by field.

2 · Explain

Source-aware

Every fact labelled with origin and freshness.

3 · Guide

Next steps

Planning, registration, study, advising and career.

4 · Hand off

Official action

Deep links to the system that owns the transaction.

5 · Measure

Outcomes

Aggregate analytics with privacy thresholds.

Institution controls

Governance from day one.

Tenant setup, branding and role administration
Data-source approval and field mapping
Integration health and freshness monitoring
AI, curriculum and course policy configuration
Audit logs and time-bound support access
Implementation, UAT and go-live dashboard

Interoperability

Standards, not scraping.

SAML / OIDC SSOSCIMLTI 1.3OneRosterQTICommon CartridgeSIS APIsCanvasBrightspaceBlackboardMoodleGoogle WorkspaceMicrosoft 365

Most of these are built and tested in a controlled environment or planned; none is connected to an institution yet. See the integrations directory for each one's status.

Implementation

A bounded path from pilot to platform.

Weeks 1–2

Discover

Stakeholders, systems, data boundary, success metrics.

Weeks 3–5

Configure

Tenant, SSO, approved sources, resources.

Week 6

UAT

Staff and student testing, accessibility review.

Week 7

Launch

Cohort onboarding and training.

End of term

Outcome review

Measured results, limits, and expansion path.

Typical timeline for a Registration & Path Pilot. Enterprise and LMS migrations are scoped separately.

Plan an institutional launch.

Talk to Semester See institution packages Trust Center

Home / Pricing

Pricing

Start free. Grow with your school.

Clear prices for students, and scoped packages for departments and institutions. Your data export, deletion and saved work are never behind a paywall.

Planned Paid plans are not on sale yet. Semester is free during the private beta.

Semester is in a private beta and sign-up may ask for an invite. Request one →

Students

Free$0

Unlimited courses and syllabi
One term plan and basic schedule
Source labels and privacy controls
Data export and deletion

Start planning free

Plus$29.99 / year

Everything in Free
Multiple plans and comparisons
Calendar sync and exports
Expanded reminders and sharing

Not on sale yet · see terms

ProAt launch

Everything in Plus
Advanced planning scenarios
Study Studio and Workspace expansion
Career portfolio tools

Join the waitlist

AccessPaid by your school

School SSO
Verified institutional data
Premium modules your school enables
Institution support

For institutions

Planned pricing. Paid plans are not on sale yet; everything is free during the private beta. Commercial terms.

Paid plans are not on sale yet. Semester is free during the private beta. The prices above are planned; nobody can be charged until checkout ships and the terms below are final and reviewed by counsel.

Commercial terms

Exactly how paying would work.

Planned terms for individual plans. Institution packages are set in a written order form.

Planned commercial terms for student plans
Term	What it is	Status
Current price	Free: $0. Plus: $3.99 a month or $29.99 a year (planned). Pro: priced at launch. Access: paid by your school.	Planned
Currency	US dollars (USD).	Planned
Billing period	Monthly or annual, charged at the start of each period.	Planned
Tax	Sales tax added at checkout where it applies, shown before you pay. Final approach set with counsel.	Planned
Free vs Plus	Free keeps unlimited courses and syllabi, one term plan, source labels, privacy controls, export and deletion. Plus adds multiple plans, calendar sync and exports, and expanded reminders and sharing.	Planned
Free trial	None planned. The Free plan is how to try Semester.	Not supported
Upgrading	Plus starts when you pay. Moving from monthly to annual takes effect at the next renewal; no hidden proration.	Planned
Cancelling	Two clicks in Settings. Plus lasts to the end of the period you paid for, then you move to Free.	Planned
Your data after cancelling	Everything stays. Export and deletion are free on every plan, forever.	Planned
Refunds	Proposed: full refund within 14 days of an annual purchase or renewal. Draft terms, not in force.	In preparation
Receipts and invoices	Emailed after each payment and downloadable from Settings → Membership.	Planned
Billing contact	harrisonjrubin7@gmail.com (Harrison Rubin). A billing@ address comes with the company domain.	Available now
School-sponsored access	If your school buys Semester Access, you sign in with school SSO, see “Sponsored by your institution”, and we stop charging you. No school sponsors Semester yet.	Institution-configured

See membership and cancellation for a preview of the planned flow, and policy versions for the status of the refund policy.

Departments, institutions & enterprise

Every package starts with a discovery call and a written scope.

Package	Buyer	Scope	Pricing model
Department Launch	Department or office	Cohort workspace, scoped workflows, resource publishing, training	Fixed setup + annual or per-cohort subscription
Registration & Path Pilot	Institution	Defined cohort, one registration or advising cycle, outcome report	Fixed implementation + pilot fee
Semester Access	Institution	Tenant, SSO, approved data and integrations, student platform	From $15K / yr (<5K students) · $35K (5–20K) · $75K (20K+)
Native LMS	Institution	Course delivery, assessment, gradebook, migration, support	Enrollment / course volume + migration + support tier
University OS	Enterprise system	Multi-module, multi-office, multi-campus governance, 24/7 operations	Custom multi-year agreement

What shapes an institutional quote

Student populationEnabled modulesCampus countSSO / SCIM scopeLMS / SIS integrationsMigration scopeSupport / SLA tierAI usageData residencyTraining scope

Not sure where to start?

Most institutions begin with a Registration & Path Pilot for one cohort and one registration cycle.

Plan a pilot

Our pricing rules

No hidden cancellationCancel from your account in two clicks.

Your data is never paywalledExport, deletion and saved work stay free.

Price before checkoutMonthly and annual prices, refund terms and what's included, up front.

Honest upgrade promptsYou only see one when you reach a real plan limit.

Home / Trust Center

Semester Trust Center

Trust is part of the product.

Semester is designed for student agency, institutional governance, accessible learning and clear operational accountability. Everything here is scoped, dated and owned, and we only claim what we can evidence.

Request procurement package View system status

Scope: Semester web app and this website · Last updated Sept 27, 2026 · Owner: Founder · Contact trust questions

Trust at a glance

Operational status

Preview · public monitoring not live yet

Starts at general availability

View components →

Procurement shortcuts

Request documents

Compliance & assessment status

Only factual, current status. A badge appears here only when the report or certificate exists.

Understand our evidence →

Latest trust updates

What changed, and whether you need to act.

All updates →

Commitments

Things we will not do.

Sell Customer Student Data or use it for behavioral advertising
Train generalized or third-party AI models on identifiable Customer Student Data without separate written institutional authorization
Let AI make official academic decisions
Claim a certification or audit we don't hold
Collect sensitive information before it's needed

Where we stand for procurement

Our own check against the gaps that most often stall higher-ed vendor reviews.

Data-use map

Pick a kind of data. See exactly what happens to it.

HECVAT readiness simulator

Plan your review of Semester before the first call.

Tell us your scope. We'll show the review workstreams, stakeholders, documents and questions you'll likely need. This plans an evaluation; it isn't a compliance result.

Procurement accelerator

Select what your review needs.

We verify your institutional email, add an NDA if needed, and open a secure document room with a named owner.

Select

Pick documents.

Verify

Institution email check.

NDA

Only if required.

Document room

With a named owner.

Our HECVAT release rule

Confirm your workbook version (Lite, Full, supplements)
Confirm product and tenant scope
Answer from implemented controls only, never planned work
Map every answer to a control and evidence
Mark Yes, Partial, No or N/A honestly
Explain gaps with compensating controls, owner and target date
Security, privacy and legal review before release
Track recipient, version and date

Our VPAT / ACR release rule

Exact product version and included modules
Standards and VPAT template version stated
Evaluator and evaluation date stated
Keyboard, screen reader, zoom, mobile and manual testing confirmed
Student, faculty, admin, site and LMS scope stated
Limitations, workarounds, owners and remediation dates listed
Findings never rewritten into sales language
Scope, version, date and confidentiality marked

Accessibility progress

Our accessibility commitment, in the open.

We publish where we stand instead of a vague statement. We never claim conformance we can't evidence.

Target

WCAG 2.2 Level AA

Built in

Keyboard navigation, visible focus, reduced motion, colour-independent labels

Last formal audit

Not yet conducted · planned before general availability

VPAT / ACR

Will be published after the formal audit

Report a barrier

Operating cadence

How the Trust Center stays current.

Every trust asset has an owner and a review schedule. Today the founder owns each one; named owners are added as the team grows.

Asset	Owner role	Review cadence
Security content	Security lead	Quarterly and on material change
Privacy & student data	Privacy / legal	Quarterly and on data or subprocessor change
AI governance	AI governance lead	Quarterly and on provider, policy or use-case change
Accessibility	Accessibility lead	Every release plus quarterly
Reliability & status	Reliability lead	Continuous status; quarterly page review
Subprocessors	Privacy / vendor manager	On change plus quarterly
Procurement documents	Security, commercial, legal	Per report version or expiry
Badges & claims	Legal + evidence owner	Monthly and before any campaign

Home / Company

Company

We're building the calm layer of college.

Semester was started at Vanderbilt by a student who kept a dozen tabs open to answer one question: what should I do next? We're building the answer for every student, with the governance universities need.

How Semester started

Why does navigating college feel harder than the work students are actually asked to do?

Semester started with that simple question.

For Semester’s founder, the answer became clear while transferring between institutions and trying to make sense of systems that did not connect. Course requirements, transfer questions, deadlines, advising, documents, and support lived in different places. Dyslexia made the constant switching, reading, and reconstructing context even more demanding.

Semester was created to make the student experience clearer—not by pretending college is simple, but by making information more connected, accessible, transparent, and actionable.

Read the founder's letter →

Our mission

To help students understand where they are, know what matters next, and take safe action with more confidence and control.

Responsible technology charter

Ten lines we won't cross, each mapped to a control.

How we run Semester safely

Least privilege, audit trails and critical-period operations.

Interoperability & standards

Open standards and no unnecessary lock-in.

How we present proof: no invented metrics, no unapproved logos →

Operating principles

How we make decisions.

Student first, institution safe

We design for the student and never at the institution's expense.

Show the source

If we can't say where a fact came from, we don't show it as fact.

Claims need evidence

Every public claim maps to something we can show.

Accessible from the start

WCAG 2.2 AA is a launch requirement, not a follow-up.

No manipulation

No streaks, guilt or dark patterns to drive usage.

Small and honest

We say what's built, what's planned, and what isn't.

Join us

Four ways to be part of Semester.

Careers

Build with us

Founding roles in engineering, design and campus growth.

View roles

Ambassadors

Represent Semester on campus

Paid, disclosed, trained. Help peers get organized.

Join the network

Advisors

Shape the product

Registrars, advisors, faculty, CIOs, accessibility and privacy experts.

Apply as an advisor

Partners

Integrate or resell

LMS, SIS, tutoring, library, career and implementation partners.

Partner inquiry

Press

Press kit

Logo, product screenshots, founder bio and company facts are available on request.

Request the press kit

Company facts

Founded

2026, Vanderbilt University

Stage

Pre-launch · design-partner cohort forming

Product

Web app, available now in preview

Home / Company / Careers

Careers & community

Do the most careful work of your career.

We're a small team. These are the roles and programs we expect to open first. Send an introduction and we'll reply when one fits.

Role / program	Team	Type	What you'd own
Founding full-stack engineer	Product	Full-time	Planning, sync and the source-label system
Product designer	Product	Contract	Accessible flows across student and admin apps
Campus ambassador	Growth	Paid, part-time	Workshops, feedback and useful content on your campus
Advisory network	Product & policy	Volunteer or equity	Guidance from registrars, advisors, faculty, IT and privacy experts

Interview process

Intro call, a short paid work sample, then a conversation with the founder. Two weeks end to end.

Ambassador rules

Compensation is always disclosed. FTC-compliant endorsement guidance, privacy training, no fake reviews.

Accommodations

Ask for any accommodation at any stage. Semester is an equal opportunity employer.

Send an introduction

Home / Contact

Talk to Semester

Tell us what you're working on.

We route every message to a named owner. Institutional requests get a reply within two business days.

Email us directly: harrisonjrubin7@gmail.com · goes to Harrison Rubin, the founder

What happens next

Within 2 days

A reply from a person

Not a sequence. Someone who can answer.

Call 1

Discovery

Your cohort, systems, goals and timeline.

Within a week

A written scope

What we'd build, what it costs, and how we'd measure it.

Contact directory

The right person, the first time.

Every topic reaches Harrison Rubin, the founder, at one address today, and there is no backup responder yet. Dedicated topic addresses come once the company owns its domain; we won't list addresses that don't exist.

Contact directory by topic
Topic	Address today	Owner	Backup owner	Response target	Form route	Escalation

Home / Design partners

University design partner program

Build the student action layer with us.

A small first cohort of departments and institutions. You get early access and real influence. We get structured feedback and a shared commitment to measuring what works.

Apply as a design partner Estimate your launch

What design partners receive

Early feature access
Roadmap influence through co-design calls
Implementation priority
Structured pilot support
An executive outcome readout
Preferential terms where appropriate

What we ask

A named executive sponsor
Working group participation
A defined cohort and use case
Structured feedback each month
Collaboration on security, accessibility and procurement review
Optional case-study discussion, only after proven results

Design-partner councils

Eight councils that shape the product, not endorse it.

Each council will influence roadmap, policy, testing and implementation. All eight are forming; none has met yet.

Forming

Student Council

Onboarding, planning, source labels and accessibility from the people who use it daily.

Forming

Faculty Council

Course Studio, accessible authoring, assessment and course AI policy.

Forming

Advisor & Student Success Council

Agendas, consented sharing and privacy boundaries.

Forming

Registrar Council

Source authority, registration readiness and official handoffs.

Forming

Accessibility Council

Barrier review, testing with disabled students and staff, ACR evidence.

Forming

CIO / CISO Council

Identity, integrations, security evidence and supply chain.

Forming

AI Governance Council

Use cases, evaluations, course policy and the kill switch.

Forming

Enterprise Customer Council

Multi-campus governance, migration and service commitments.

Charter

Each council gets a written charter: scope, decision visibility and how feedback is answered.

Cadence

Planned quarterly, with notes and decisions shared back to members.

Compensation & disclosure

Any compensation is disclosed. Members are never presented as endorsing Semester.

How to apply

Use the contact form and choose “Design partnership or integration”.

Home / Roadmap

Roadmap & changelog

What's built, what's next.

No invented dates. Items move columns when they ship, and each one says what it can't do yet. Below the columns: the long-horizon phases, how we prioritize, and the gate every feature passes.

Last updated September 27, 2026

Long-horizon roadmap

Five phases, each with exit evidence.

A phase is finished when its evidence exists, not when a date passes. We are in Phase 0.

Phase 0 · Foundations and risk controls In progress

A secure, accessible, operable foundation before broad customer commitments.

Phase 0 capabilities
Capability	Exit evidence
Tenant isolation and row-level security	Automated positive and negative access tests
Secure development and supply-chain basics	Lockfiles, CI checks, secret scanning, dependency updates; SBOM pilot next
Design system and WCAG baseline	Keyboard, reflow, contrast and component test suite
Data inventory and lineage baseline	Data map, classification and retention matrix
Monitoring, backup and restore	Dashboards, a timed restore drill, an incident runbook
Trust and procurement foundations	Trust Center; HECVAT and VPAT request process

Phase 1 · Full launch core Planned

Make every advertised critical workflow real.

Phase 1 capabilities
Capability	Exit evidence
Student platform with real accounts	Account and persistence acceptance testing
SSO, LTI and SIS integration base	Positive, negative, security and reconciliation tests
AI source, policy and evaluation controls	Evaluation, red-team and kill-switch evidence
Billing, entitlements and support	Checkout, cancel, dunning and support drills
HECVAT, VPAT, DPA and SLA	A current, scoped evidence package
Operations Console	Role, acceptance, audit and approval tests

Phase 2 · Repeatable institution scale Planned

Policy-as-code, a data-quality console, the Launch Center, customer success and renewal, migration with parallel run, game days, and a developer sandbox. Exit evidence: a real tenant launched from kickoff to hypercare.

Phase 3 · Durable differentiation Planned

The Credential Wallet foundation, a skills and evidence graph, CASE identifiers, an Open Badges and CLR export pilot, and the Digital Experience Gap benchmark. Exit evidence: evidence, share, revoke and export acceptance testing.

Phase 4 · Ecosystem and global scale Planned

A credential issuer network, an opt-in employer ecosystem, partner certification, localization, governed research, and a decision on ISO 27001, 27701 and 42001. Exit evidence: issuer governance, consent, audit and contracts in place.

Priority tiers

What has to exist before what.

Tier 0

Before enterprise launch

Tenant security, real SSO and MFA, supply-chain controls, backup and DR, accessibility evidence, HECVAT and DPA, data inventory, on-call, rollback.

Tier 1

Repeatable institutional scale

Policy-as-code, integration health, the Launch Center, customer portal, migration, data quality, threat models, critical-period operations.

Tier 2

Differentiation after the base

Credential Wallet foundation, skills evidence, open-standards roadmap, maturity benchmark, Accessibility Demo Lab.

Tier 3

Expansion after proof

Credential issuing, employer verification, marketplace, cross-institution portability, research program, localization, native mobile.

Tier 4

Only with strict governance

High-impact workflows, direct registration writes, automated official decisions, sensitive-data domains, international data residency.

Never early

Lines we won't cross

See the responsible technology charter.

Proof calendar

The evidence we owe, on a schedule.

Enterprise readiness is a recurring discipline, not a claim. Months count from the start of the first pilot, which hasn't started yet. Each item is marked by where it honestly stands today.

Month 1

Auth and RLS test report In progress

Row-level security and policy tests already run in CI; the written report is next.

Accessibility baseline In progress

Automated journey audits and a contrast sweep run today; a qualified review is planned.

Backup restore drill Planned

Waiting on production access for the drill.

Support and incident tabletop Planned

Runbooks exist; the exercise hasn't been run.

Month 2

Student workflow usability study Planned

With consent and published limitations.

Load test Planned

Registration and finals peaks.

HECVAT evidence inventory In progress

The response is in preparation.

DPA and Trust Center review In progress

The Trust Center is published; the DPA needs counsel's review.

Month 3

Institution UAT Planned

Acceptance testing with the first pilot school.

SSO and integration test Planned

Against the school's own identity provider.

VPAT / ACR In progress

In preparation for the piloted screens.

Pilot outcome baseline Planned

Two or three agreed measures, recorded before launch.

Every quarter Planned

Access review · vendor review · AI evaluation · accessibility review · disaster-recovery exercise · security and risk review · customer advisory review. None has run yet; the first cycle starts with the first pilot.

How we prioritize

A weighted score, then a human decision.

Each capability is scored 1–5 on every dimension. The score is a decision aid, not a replacement for strategy review. It is reviewed quarterly.

Priority = Σ (score × weight)

Prioritization scoring model
Dimension	Question	Weight
Trust and risk reduction	Does it materially reduce security, privacy, accessibility or operational risk?	+1.5
Revenue enablement	Does it unlock a segment, contract or renewal?	+1.3
Core student value	Does it make a recurring student decision clearer?	+1.2
Dependency	Does it unblock several other capabilities?	+1.2
Evidence urgency	Is it needed for HECVAT, VPAT, SOC 2, DPA or SLA?	+1.2
Institutional differentiation	Does it improve defensibility in university buying?	+1.1
Operational readiness	Can we support it now?	+0.8
Complexity and cost	Team time, vendor spend and maintenance	−1.0
Irreversibility risk	Can it be piloted safely and rolled back?	−1.0

Roadmap admission gate

Before a feature enters active delivery.

Strategic problem and target user documented
Student, customer or institution value evidenced
Data source and authority identified
Privacy, security and accessibility review completed
Role, scope and consent model defined
Operational owner and support model assigned
Failure, fallback and rollback behavior defined
Contract and commercial implications reviewed
Metrics and limitations defined
Staffing, cost and maintenance burden approved
Testable in a controlled environment
Sunset or exit path defined

The hard scope boundary

No new module launches unless it replaces, improves or connects an existing student or institution workflow with measurable value.

What does this replace?
What student decision does it clarify?
What institution decision does it improve?
What data does it require?
Who owns it?
How is it supported?
How is it tested?
How does it fail?
How is it removed if it does not work?

Home / Pricing / Membership

Membership, renewal & cancellation

Cancelling is as easy as signing up.

Here's how plan management works in Semester, what happens when you cancel, and our refund terms, before you ever pay.

Your membershipPreview of the planned flow · not live

Semester Plus · Annual

Renews at the end of your paid period · planned price

Example

Payment method

Shown here once checkout exists

Receipts & invoices

Planned: every receipt, downloadable

Institution-sponsored access

Not eligible yet · Check with your school

Your data

Export or delete, free on every plan

How cancellation works

Click 1

Cancel membership

In Settings → Membership. No phone call, no chat, no retention maze.

Click 2

Confirm

We tell you the date Plus ends. Telling us why is optional.

After

Your work stays

You move to Free. Nothing is deleted. Export is offered, never required.

Try it: the preview on the left walks through the planned flow. No billing exists yet.

If a payment fails

No surprises, and your data is never held hostage.

Day 0

Clear notice

Email and in-app message saying what failed.

Days 1–7

Retry & reminder

Automatic retries; update your card any time.

Days 7–14

Grace period

Plus keeps working.

Day 14

Final notice

The exact date Plus features pause.

After

Back to Free

Paid features pause. Your data, export and deletion stay available.

Refund & renewal terms

Proposed terms. Final terms are published here before checkout goes live.

Renewal reminderAnnual plans get an email 7 days before renewal with the price and a cancel link.

Annual refundsFull refund if you cancel within 14 days of a purchase or renewal.

Monthly plansCancel any time; Plus lasts until the end of the month you paid for.

ReactivationCome back any time. Your plans and settings are where you left them.

Price changesAt least 30 days' notice, and never mid-term.

Institution accessIf your school sponsors Semester, we tell you and stop charging you.

Home / Trust / Evidence library

Evidence library

Every claim, and the evidence behind it.

Organized by claim. Each item shows its scope, version, owner, method, limits and who can access it. Items still in preparation say so.

Proof map

Each major claim, mapped to its evidence.

Claim	Evidence	Access	Status	Reviewed

Evidence	Claim area	Scope · version	Owner	Limitations	Access	Status

Last reviewed September 28, 2026. Procurement-room items are released through the procurement accelerator.

Capability status

Home / Trust / Accessibility

Accessibility center

A barrier is a bug. Tell us and we'll fix it.

Report a problem, ask for another format, see known issues and our response targets. We treat accessibility barriers as defects, not future enhancements.

Report a barrier Known issues Accessible authoring guides

Evidence

Accessibility Conformance Report

In progress

Based on

VPAT® 2.5 Rev (WCAG edition), when issued

Product version

Semester web app, preview

Evaluation date

Not yet evaluated · external audit planned before general availability

Scope

Student web app and this website. Native LMS: not offered yet.

Status

Assessment underway. This does not imply conformance.

Known limitations

View known issues and remediation

Request current accessibility status

Accessibility statement

Semester is committed to making its website and application usable by people with disabilities. We design and test toward WCAG 2.2 AA, including keyboard operation, visible focus, semantic structure, contrast, responsive reflow, screen-reader compatibility, reduced motion, accessible forms and accessible learning workflows.

Accessibility is ongoing. We keep an issue register and a remediation process, and we welcome reports of barriers below.

1high-impact known issue

4lower-impact known issues

—last manual audit

1 dayresponse target, blocking issues

How we test

Automated accessibility checks on every pull request for six student-app journeys: skip link, landmarks, names, ARIA references and 320px reflow
Colour-contrast tests in CI, plus a nightly check of painted pixels
320px reflow checks on six core journeys in CI
Every status shown with a word and a symbol, never colour alone
Manual screen-reader pass: not done yet, scheduled with the external evaluation
External WCAG 2.2 AA evaluation before general availability

Supported environments

Assistive technology	Browser
VoiceOver (macOS, iOS)	Safari
NVDA (Windows)	Chrome, Firefox
JAWS (Windows)	Chrome
TalkBack (Android)	Chrome
Keyboard only, zoom	All current browsers

Our target test matrix. Results will be published with the ACR.

Accessibility evidence

What's been tested, by whom, and what isn't yet.

Automated checks are not a WCAG audit. Owner for every row: Harrison Rubin, founder, until an accessibility lead is named.

Accessibility evidence by product area
Area	Scope	Status	Last tested	Known limitation
Public company site	Every page and form: axe-core (WCAG 2.0–2.2 A/AA and best practice) at desktop, plus overflow checks at phone width	Automated checks	Sept 28, 2026 (this build)	No manual screen-reader pass yet.
Student app	Six journeys (Home, Calendar, Courses, Assignments, Registration, Degree): skip link, landmarks, names, ARIA references, 320px reflow	Automated checks on every pull request	Each pull request to main (latest Sept 28, 2026)	Screen-reader review pending; see known issues.
Colour contrast	Student app screens, light and dark	Nightly automated sweep	Nightly	Covers text and marks the sweep can see; images excluded.
Ask Semester	Chat, streaming responses, citations	In preparation	Not yet tested separately	How streaming answers are announced needs review.
Course Studio	Authoring	Planned	N/A	Not yet released.
Assessment	Keyboard, timing and accommodations	Planned	N/A	Not yet released.
External audit and ACR/VPAT	Student app and this site	Planned	N/A	Before general availability.

Response targets

Severity	Acknowledge	Workaround	Fix target
Blocks a task	1 business day	2 business days	10 business days
Major difficulty	2 business days	5 business days	Next release
Harder than it should be	2 business days	As needed	Within 60 days
Minor	5 business days	—	Scheduled

Targets, not guarantees. When sent, your report gets a reference ID. Escalation: Harrison Rubin, the founder, at harrisonjrubin7@gmail.com — the only responder for now.

Home / Product / Compare

Compare approaches

Semester vs the usual way.

Fair, category-level comparisons of workflows. We describe what Semester is designed to do; we don't make claims about named products.

Moment	The usual way	What Semester is designed to do

Home / Trust / Status

System status

Is Semester up right now?

Checked live from your own browser when you open this page. Nothing here is a cached report or an uptime figure.

Checking…

Contacting each service from this browser.

Live checks

“Up” means this browser reached the service just now. It is not an uptime percentage, and a failure here can also mean your network, a firewall or an extension blocked the request.

Not listed: LMS and SIS integrations, notifications and billing. They aren't generally available yet, so there is nothing live to check.

Incidents

Loading the incident list from the product's status page…

Scheduled maintenance

None scheduled. We plan maintenance outside registration windows and finals.

Open the app's own status page →

How status and releases are run

The operation behind this page.

This page isn't hosted separately from the site yet; an independently hosted status page is planned. The app's own status page runs outside the app bundle so it still loads if the app fails to build.

Status components and what each means
Component	What it covers	Checked here
The app	The web page students open; planning, courses and study on the device	Available now
Sign-in and saved work	Accounts, sign-in and sync of saved work	Available now
Product status page	The app's own status and incident list	Available now
AI assistant, integrations, notifications, billing	Separate components once they're generally available	Planned

Incidents

Written templates for the first notice, updates, the resolution notice and an internal handoff record. Incidents are posted to the product status page. Available now

Maintenance

Announced ahead on the status page, outside registration windows and finals. A maintenance workflow with subscriber notices is planned. Planned

Customer notifications

Security incidents that affect people are notified by email under the incident process; subscription preferences and customer-contact notices are planned. In preparation

Release notes

The product keeps a tester-facing changelog: what you'll see, and whether you need to do anything. Public highlights are on the roadmap & changelog and trust updates.

Rollback

A written rollback procedure; a timed rollback test is planned. In preparation

Independent hosting

A status page that stays up if our hosting is down. Planned

How we communicate incidents

In terms of what you'll experience.

We say what a student, faculty member or administrator will notice and what to do, not just which internal component failed. Incidents are posted to the product's status page; security incidents also follow the notice process in our disclosure policy.

Example incident noticeIllustrative demo data

Degraded · Syllabus processing

What you'll notice: new syllabus uploads take up to 20 minutes to show deadlines. What to do: nothing; uploads are queued and none are lost. Next update: within 1 hour.

Acknowledge

Target: within 30 minutes of confirmed material impact, during pilot hours

Update cadence

Target: at least hourly during a material incident

Forensic detail

Withheld while an incident is active

Post-incident summary

Target: within 5 business days for material incidents

Who's on call

The founder, during the private beta. There is no 24/7 rota yet.

Record keeping

Incident history is kept in the product repository's status file

Home / Policies

Policies & version archive

Every policy, and every change to it.

Each policy will show its current version, effective date, past versions and a plain-language summary of what changed. No policy is in force yet.

See every policy's version and status

Policy	Covers	Version	Effective	Status

Material changes

Emailed at least 30 days before they take effect
Plain-language summary with every change
Past versions stay public
Institutional customers are also notified through their account manager

Questions

Legal, privacy or data requests go to a named owner.

Home / Why Semester

Why Semester is different

Not just one more place to put information.

Semester helps each person understand what matters, why it matters, what source supports it, and what safe action to take next.

Traditional approach	Semester approach

Five pillars

What you should be able to see on every page.

What we won't build

Some features would undo the whole point.

These are common in edtech. They conflict with student agency, privacy and trust, so Semester doesn't have them.

A student social feed
Public rankings or leaderboards
Unmoderated course or instructor ratings
An "AI predicts your success" score
Emotion or facial analysis
Opaque engagement scoring
Aggressive popups and countdown timers
Lead gates on basic student resources
Unsupported "certified" badges

Home / Trust / Procurement tracker

Procurement tracker

Your review, visible to both sides.

For qualified buyers, every document request, owner, status and decision date lives here instead of in email threads. Preview with sample data.

Example University · Student platform review

Illustrative demo data

6 / 10workstreams complete

Nov 14security decision due

Dec 1contract target

2open questions

Workstream	Semester owner	Customer owner	Status	Next action
Documents requested (8)	Founder	Procurement office	Delivered	—
HECVAT	Founder	Information Security	Under review	Answer follow-ups 4.2, 7.1
VPAT / ACR	Founder	Digital Accessibility	Status report sent	Keyboard demo Nov 6
DPA	Founder + counsel	General Counsel	Redlines	Return redlines Nov 8
Security review	Founder	CISO	In progress	Architecture call Nov 5
Legal review	Counsel	General Counsel	Waiting on DPA	—
Integration review	Founder	IT Integrations	Approved	—
Accessibility review	Founder	Digital Accessibility	Scheduled	Demo Lab walkthrough

Open questions

Data residency for backups?
Can SSO attributes exclude middle names?

Next meeting

Architecture review · Nov 5, 2:00 pm CT

Proposed design is marked separately from contracted capability.

Home / Enterprise / Migration center

Native LMS migration center

Move courses without betting the term on it.

Inventory, mapping, accessibility remediation, parallel run and a rollback plan. Semester's native LMS is in development; this is the method we'll use, published now so you can judge it.

Discuss a migration Check readiness

Inventory & mapping

What moves, and where it lands.

Your LMS object	Semester equivalent	Method	Watch for
Course shell & modules	Course Studio course & units	Common Cartridge import	Custom HTML and embedded tools
Pages & files	Pages & files	Import with accessibility scan	Untagged PDFs, missing alt text
Quizzes & question banks	Assessments & item banks	QTI import	Unsupported question types
Rubrics	Rubrics	Mapped import	Point-scale differences
Gradebook & history	Gradebook	Reconciled during parallel run	Weighting and drop rules
LTI tools	LTI 1.3 tools	Re-registered per tool	LTI 1.1-only tools

Canvas, Blackboard and Brightspace exports each have quirks; we document them per course in the inventory.

Readiness & inventory

Every course, tool and gradebook rule listed.

Pilot courses

A handful of volunteer faculty migrate first.

Accessibility remediation

Issues fixed during migration, not after.

Parallel run

Both systems live; gradebooks reconciled weekly.

Cutover or rollback

Go/no-go on written criteria; rollback plan ready.

Faculty onboarding

Clinics, office hours and a course-by-course checklist.

Archive & retention

Read-only archive of old courses for your retention period.

Support model

Migration lead plus premium support through cutover.

Migration FAQ

Is the native LMS available now?

No. It's in development. We publish the migration method now so institutions can evaluate it early and help shape it as design partners.

Do we have to migrate everything at once?

No. Most migrations start with pilot courses and run both systems in parallel for at least one term.

What if something goes wrong at cutover?

Every migration has written go/no-go criteria and a rollback plan tested before cutover.

Home / Academic integrity

Academic-integrity center

AI that helps students learn, inside the course's rules.

For faculty, provosts and students. How Semester's AI and study tools respect course policy, what it will refuse, and how to appeal a mistake.

Policy hierarchy

Institution policy

Course policy

Assignment policy

The strictest applicable rule wins.

Support	Typical setting
Explain a concept from course sources	Allowed
Practice questions and flashcards	Allowed
Feedback on your own draft	Faculty choice
Writing graded answers	Restricted
Any help during an active assessment	Blocked

When a request isn't allowedIllustrative

Write my answer to question 3 of problem set 4.

Your ECON 1010 policy doesn't allow AI to write graded answers. I can explain the concept behind question 3 using your Week 6 readings, or give you a similar practice problem.

ECON 1010 AI policy

Source-grounded help

Answers come from approved course materials and cite them.

No fabrication

Semester won't invent citations, data or results. If it doesn't know, it says so.

Faculty controls

Set allowed modes per course and per assignment; see aggregate usage, never private chats.

Draft & review

Faculty can require drafts and revision history before AI feedback.

Student guidance

Every course shows its AI rules in plain language before students ask.

Appeal & correction

If Semester blocks something it shouldn't, students can flag it and faculty can review.

Home / Company / Founder's letter

A letter from the founder

Why I started Semester

A personal note from Harrison Rubin on the problem Semester exists to solve, and how that shaped the way it is built.

College is supposed to be a place where you build your future. But for a lot of students, it can feel like a constant process of trying to find the right information before it is too late.

I know that feeling personally.

As a transfer student, I had to navigate more than one institution at once. Important information lived in different systems, on different websites, in different emails, and with different people. I was trying to understand what would transfer, what I still needed, where I stood, what deadlines mattered, what courses made sense, and who I needed to talk to.

None of it was impossible. But it was exhausting.

Every answer seemed to create another question. Every school had its own portal, policies, course systems, forms, calendars, and language. The work of figuring out college often felt like a second course load—one that students are expected to manage alone.

Dyslexia made that experience even harder.

When information is spread across long documents, inconsistent websites, unreadable portals, emails, PDFs, course pages, and systems that do not connect, the problem is not simply finding information. It is holding everything together long enough to understand what it means.

I did not need more information.

I needed clarity.

I needed one place that could help me see where I was, what mattered next, what information I could trust, what I still needed to decide, and what I could do without losing control of my own work and data.

That is why I started Semester.

Semester is built on a simple belief: students should not have to become experts in university bureaucracy just to make progress in college.

A student should be able to understand their path. They should be able to plan their term, prepare for registration, organize coursework, find support, prepare for advising, build career evidence, and know what to do next—without having to piece their life together across a dozen disconnected systems.

Semester is not about replacing the people who help students. Advisors, faculty, tutors, librarians, disability-services professionals, career teams, and campus staff matter deeply. Semester is about making those conversations more useful by helping students arrive with context, questions, plans, and clearer next steps.

It is also not about hiding decisions behind AI.

Students deserve to know where information comes from. They deserve to know whether something is institution verified, imported, student entered, estimated, or needs review. They deserve to know what an AI tool is using, what it cannot know, and when an official decision still belongs with the institution or a person they trust.

Accessibility is personal to me, too.

Accessibility is not an extra feature. It is whether a student can read the screen, find the right action, navigate without getting lost, use a keyboard, listen to information, zoom in, take more time, understand the language, and complete the task in front of them.

A student should never feel like the system was built for someone else.

Semester is being built for the student who has too many tabs open.

The student who is transferring.

The student trying to understand requirements.

The student balancing work, family, athletics, health, commuting, or a new environment.

The student who needs information to be clearer, more connected, and easier to act on.

The student who is capable, but tired of fighting the systems that are supposed to help them succeed.

College is complicated.

Your path should not be.

Harrison Rubin — Founder, Semester

Personal principles

What I learned from being a transfer student

Information is not useful if students cannot find it when they need it.
A portal is not a solution if students still have to reconstruct their own story across multiple systems.
Accessibility changes whether a student can participate—not just how a page looks.
Students need clarity, not judgment.
Students deserve to know what information is official, what is estimated, and what needs review.
AI should make information easier to understand, not make decisions students cannot inspect or challenge.
Technology should help students have better conversations with people—not remove people from the process.
A student should not need to be an expert in bureaucracy to move forward.

“I built Semester because students deserve clarity—not another system to fight through.”

Harrison Rubin, Founder

Start planning free Read the product principles Write to Harrison

Home / Company / Report a concern

Ethics & reporting center

Report a concern. We'll take it seriously.

One place for every kind of report, with confidentiality guidance, a response target and a named owner for each.

Report type	Where it goes	Confidentiality	Acknowledge	Appeal

Home / Platform / System boundaries

System-of-record boundaries

What Semester does, and which system stays in charge.

Semester integrates first. Official systems stay authoritative for official decisions.

Domain	Semester's role	Authoritative system

Home / Help / Compatibility

Browser, device & compatibility

Where Semester works.

Area	Supported
Browsers	Latest two versions of Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari
Operating systems	Current macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, ChromeOS
Mobile	Web app, installable as a PWA; no native store apps yet
Minimum width	320 CSS pixels
Offline	Recently viewed Today and plans load offline; changes sync when you reconnect
File uploads	PDF, DOCX, images; syllabus extraction works best with text PDFs
Deprecated browsers	6 months' notice before support ends

Assistive technology matrix

Our target test matrix: VoiceOver + Safari, NVDA + Firefox/Chrome, JAWS + Chrome/Edge, TalkBack + Chrome. Results publish with the ACR.

Accessibility Demo Lab →

Home / Company / Responsible technology

Responsible technology charter

Ten lines we won't cross.

Principles are easy to write. This charter maps each commitment to the product control that enforces it, the policy behind it, who owns it, how it's tested and how to report a breach, with an honest status for each.

In placeDesignedPlanned

The ten commitments, mapped to controls. The founder owns each one until named leads are hired.
Commitment	Product control	Policy	Owner	How it's tested	How to report	Status
No sale of student data	No data-broker or advertising SDKs. Every provider that receives data is listed with its purpose.	Privacy policy (draft, not yet in force)	Founder	An automated test fails if the app can reach a host the published subprocessor list doesn't name.	Reporting center or email	In place
No behavioral advertising with education records	No ad networks or tracking pixels in the app.	Do-not-build rules; privacy policy draft	Founder	An automated test fails the build if a common ad or tracking SDK appears in the app's code.	Reporting center or email	In place
No opaque student-risk scoring	No risk score exists. Analytics are aggregate, with minimum group sizes.	Principles: no surveillance masquerading as support	Founder	Roadmap admission gate review for any new analytics feature.	Reporting center or email	In place
No emotional or facial analysis	No camera, biometric or emotion feature exists or is planned.	What we will not build early (below)	Founder	Roadmap admission gate review.	Reporting center or email	In place
No automatic high-impact academic decisions	Semester prepares students and hands official actions to the institution's system. AI answers are never presented as decisions.	System boundaries	Founder	Confirmation before consequential actions; reviewed in product walkthroughs.	Reporting center or email	In place
No hidden AI training on customer student data	Course materials and conversations aren't used to train models without explicit authorization.	AI governance; provider data-use terms	Founder	Provider terms reviewed whenever a provider is added to the subprocessor list.	Reporting center or email	In place
No dark patterns in billing or privacy	Cancellation designed as two clicks from Settings, with access to the end of the paid period. Export and deletion are never paywalled.	Membership & cancellation	Founder	Checkout isn't live yet; cancel flow to be tested before any charge is taken.	Reporting center or email	Designed
No inaccessible critical workflows	Critical student journeys are audited for accessibility on every pull request, plus a scheduled contrast sweep.	WCAG 2.2 AA target	Founder	Automated today; an external accessibility evaluation is planned before institutional launch.	Reporting center or email	In place External audit planned
No role access beyond legitimate scope	Row-level security on every database table. Staff tools are read-first, with support access the student approves.	How we run Semester safely	Founder	Automated policy test suites on every change. The staff console is still in development.	Reporting center or email	In place Console designed
No misleading “official” labels	Every fact carries a source label: institution verified, imported, student entered, estimated or needs review. Sample data on this site is labelled.	Data governance	Founder	Reviewed in each release and site update.	Reporting center or email	In place

How to report a breach of any commitment: the reporting center, or email harrisonjrubin7@gmail.com. Frameworks and principles on this page are commitments we hold ourselves to, not certifications.

Strategic boundaries

Architecture and operating lines we hold.

These sit alongside the ten commitments. Each says how it's held today, and where a check is still to come.

Strategic boundaries and how each is held
Boundary	How it's held	Status
No generic parent access to student records	Family members see only what the student shares: a grant the student accepts, scoped to one category and item, with an expiry, revocable at any time. Automated tests deny pending, expired and revoked grants.	In place
No direct connection to an SIS production database	Institution data arrives only through approved, read-only feeds and standards such as LTI. No SIS feed is live in production yet.	In place
No service-role credentials in browsers	The browser build carries only the publishable key. The service key is read only by server functions and two admin scripts, and is listed in the key-rotation runbook. An automated check of the shipped bundle is still to come.	In place Bundle check planned
No official decision by AI	Only facts confirmed by the school's own system can carry the institution-verified label; nothing the assistant writes may. An automated test holds this rule.	In place
No fake data in production	Sample data is labelled as illustrative wherever it appears, on this site and in the product demo. A check that keeps sample records out of real accounts is planned.	Designed
No custom per-tenant forks	One codebase and one deployment for everyone. Differences between institutions are configuration, not separate code.	In place
No unapproved proctoring or surveillance	Biometric proctoring and student surveillance are on the deferred list. The admission gate in the product's code refuses a capability that touches the list unless a governance review is recorded, and a test checks it.	In place
No mental-health inference	Mental-health prediction is on the same deferred list, held by the same gate. Semester makes no inferences about wellbeing from usage.	In place

Scope we are choosing to wait on

What we will not build early.

These need very high governance and could hurt trust if rushed. Semester is stronger if it refuses to cross these lines casually.

The product's own admission gate refuses any capability that touches this list unless a governance review is recorded, and an automated test holds it to that.

Health records
Mental-health prediction
Behavioral risk scoring
Disciplinary decision tools
Financial-aid eligibility decisions
Biometric proctoring
Emotion recognition
Student surveillance
Storing bank or payment credentials
Public social feeds
Unmoderated messaging
Unreviewed marketplace transactions
Automated admissions or dismissal decisions

The final expansion test

Every new capability has to pass these questions.

Does it make a real student decision clearer?
Does it create a safe, measurable institutional benefit?
Can we explain source, authority, limitation and privacy impact?
Can we make it accessible?
Can we operate it during failure and academic peak periods?
Can we support it, contract it and offboard it?
Can we prove it works?
Would we be comfortable explaining it to a student, parent, faculty member, accessibility reviewer, privacy officer and regulator?

If the answer is yes, it strengthens Semester. If not, it is scope that should wait.

Home / Roadmap / Credential Wallet

Planned · Phase 3

Student Credential Wallet.

A student-controlled, portable record of verified learning and experience. Not a transcript clone, not a public social profile.

Nothing on this page is built. The wallet is planned for Phase 3 of the roadmap, after data, privacy and issuer governance are ready. We describe it so institutions and students can shape it.

The thesis

Your evidence, under your control.

Student-owned evidence workspace

+ Institution-issued verified achievements

+ Selected artifacts, skills and portable export

My CredentialsIllustrative concept · not built

Verified achievements

Course milestones, verified skills, badges, internships, research and leadership recognition

In progress

Skills I'm building, verification requests, evidence awaiting review

My evidence

Project artifacts, coursework I chose to include, portfolio links, reflections

Sharing

Private by default · time-limited links · revoke any time · see who viewed

Export

Download a portable record · request an institution-issued credential

Authority model

Who can say what about you.

Planned data classes, the authority behind each and what the student controls
Item	Example	Authority	Student control
Student-entered skill	“Python”	Student entered	Edit, delete, share
Evidence artifact	Project link, slide deck, code repository	Student selected	Add, remove, share
Verification request	Ask faculty or the career office to verify a skill	Student initiates	Withdraw the request
Verified skill	Faculty confirms a skill demonstrated in a course	Scoped verifier	Display and share; can't alter the issuer's claim
Institution credential	Badge, certificate, course milestone	Institution issuer	Hold and share; the issuer controls correction and revocation
Official academic record	Transcript or degree-audit data	Institution	Shown only if authorized; never replaces the official record
Employer view event	An employer opened a shared profile	Employer action	The student sees every view in the history

Sharing and export

Every share previewed, logged and revocable.

Share with an employer or graduate program

Select

Choose items, then a recipient or a time-limited link.

Preview

See exact content, scope, duration and identity details.

Confirm

The recipient gets a restricted view.

Watch

Every view is logged for the student.

Revoke

Access ends immediately.

Export

Choose

Pick items and a format.

Check

Official and student-entered items stay distinguished.

Download

A machine-readable, portable package where supported.

Request

Ask for an institution-issued credential separately.

Privacy safeguards (planned)

Private by default; no public searchable profile
No employer search without active student opt-in, and opt-in expires
Students see every employer or profile view
No grades, disability, financial, health, conduct, immigration or private study data in the wallet by default
No claim of institutional verification unless an authorized issuer made it
Correction and revocation controlled by the issuer and audited
Students can remove artifacts and revoke shares
Minor and guardian rules enforced where they apply

Standards roadmap

Foundation Planned

Internal skills, evidence and verification model; scoped issuers and an audit trail.

Interoperability Planned

CASE identifiers for competencies, Open Badges for relevant badges, CLR-compatible export.

Enterprise Planned

Issuer governance, revocation, a credential registry and a verification API; conformance testing where required.

Interoperability & standards →

Home / Trust / Interoperability & standards

Interoperability & standards

Connect openly. Leave freely.

Institutions should be able to connect Semester with open standards and take their data with them. Here is what's supported, what's planned, and the frameworks we plan against.

Higher-education standards and their status in Semester
Standard	What it's for	Status
LTI 1.3	Launching Semester from an LMS course, with tenant-bound, signed launches	Built & tested in controlled environment Canvas; not deployed to the live project
OneRoster	Rosters, courses and enrollments from the SIS	Planned
QTI	Portable assessment items and banks	Planned
Common Cartridge	Moving course content in and out	Planned
CASE	Shared identifiers for competencies and learning outcomes	Planned with the credential wallet
Open Badges	Verifiable digital badges	Planned with the credential wallet
CLR	Comprehensive Learner Record export	Planned with the credential wallet
Edu-API	Institutional data exchange	Planned · exploring

We don't claim conformance or certification for any standard until it has been tested and, where the standard offers one, certified.

Our commitment

Open standards, portable data, no unnecessary lock-in.

Use open standards where practical instead of private connectors
Students can export their own work at any time
Institutions get a documented export and offboarding path
Integration roadmap published and kept current
No contract terms that hold data hostage
Conformance evidence published once it exists

Frameworks we plan against

Used as a planning lens, not a certification.

These frameworks shape how we build and what we test. None of them is a certification Semester holds.

Frameworks and when we expect to adopt them
Framework	How we use it	When
NIST CSF 2.0	Umbrella structure for the security program, suppliers and recovery	Planning lens now
NIST Privacy Framework	Privacy risk, data lifecycle and user control	Planning lens now
NIST AI RMF 1.0	Mapping, evaluating and mitigating AI risk in Semester Intelligence	Planning lens now
CIS Controls	A practical technical-control baseline	Planning lens now
OWASP ASVS · API Top 10	Application and API security verification	Planning lens now
SLSA · SBOM	Build-pipeline integrity and dependency transparency	Planned; see supply-chain security
WCAG 2.2 AA	Product and public-site accessibility target	Target now; external evaluation planned
VPAT / ACR	Accessibility procurement evidence	In preparation
HECVAT	Higher-ed vendor security assessment	Response in preparation
SOC 2	Independent assurance	Later, when commercially justified
ISO/IEC 27001 · 27701 · 42001	Security, privacy and AI management systems	Later, when customers require them

Home / Company / How we operate

Operations

How we run Semester safely.

The rules our staff tools follow. The Company Operations Console that enforces them is in development and is not yet used with customer data; until it is, the same rules apply to how the founder works by hand.

Read-first by default

Views are read-only. Writes are limited, scoped, confirmed and audited, and show what will change and how to undo it.

Least privilege

Every role gets the narrowest access its job needs, with an expiry and a periodic review.

No unrestricted student data

No internal role, including the most privileged, gets unrestricted access to student data by default.

Access tiers

Five tiers, from read-only to break-glass.

Planned console access tiers
Tier	Who	Can	Cannot, by default
0 · Read-only insight	Executives, board or advisor viewers	View approved aggregate reports	View student records, change configuration, grant access
1 · Functional operator	Customer success, implementation, support, finance, sales	Run their own queues and workflows	Browse student records or grant their own access
2 · Specialist	Integration, reliability, security, privacy, accessibility and AI leads	Operate their systems and evidence	Read private student content without a stated need and authority
3 · Privileged administrator	Platform, security and release administrators	Controlled configuration and emergency actions	Automatically inherit all data access
4 · Break-glass	Only for an immediate security, safety, legal or recovery need	Time-limited emergency access	Anything without the conditions below

Break-glass conditions

A written emergency reason
An incident or change ticket
A time limit and automatic expiry
Fresh multi-factor sign-in
Two-person approval where feasible
A prominent session banner
An audit event for every read and write
A mandatory review afterwards

Audit trail

Append-only, and nobody can erase their own.

Each audit event records who acted, their role, the tenant and scope, the action and target, the outcome, the reason and linked ticket, the source, a safe before-and-after reference and a server timestamp.

Role grants and revocations
Tenant, policy and feature-flag changes
Support access opened and closed
Student data export, deletion or correction
Billing, credits and entitlement changes
Releases, rollbacks and AI policy changes
Every break-glass session

Support access

The student decides.

There is no generic “log in as a student.” If support ever needs to see an account:

The student initiates or approves it
It covers one support case and expires
The session is visibly marked
The agent states a reason, and every action is audited
The student can revoke it at any time

Academic critical periods

Operations that know the academic calendar.

Registration

Source health, seat freshness, release freeze, integration alerts and support staffing.

Assessment & finals

Autosave and submission health, accommodations, load and incident coverage.

Grades

Gradebook latency, posting state and passback reconciliation.

Term start

Sign-in, roster sync, course publishing, onboarding and support volume.

Game days

We rehearse failure before it happens.

Each exercise records the scenario, owner, expected behavior and alert, what actually happened, time to detect and mitigate, and corrective actions with a retest date. The exercise program is planned; the restore drill is the first scheduled.

Sign-in outage during registration
LMS outage at a deadline
Stale SIS feed
AI provider outage
Webhook replay
Grade passback failure
Network loss mid-assessment
Feature-flag misconfiguration
Accidental role grant
Cross-tenant access regression
Backup restore
Production rollback

Incident learning

Every incident gets a blameless record: what happened, customer impact, timeline, root cause, contributing factors, what worked and what failed, corrective actions with owners and due dates, and the runbook and training changes that follow. The goal is never to fail the same way twice.

Governance cadence (planned)

Weekly: incident, support and product triage
Monthly: release quality, vendors and subprocessors, data quality
Quarterly: accessibility, AI governance, security and privacy, customer advisory review

Home / Trust / Are we ready?

Launch readiness

Are we ready? An honest answer.

Semester is in a private beta. Our own launch checklist says NO-GO today: of twelve launch gates, none is fully met, nine are partly met and three aren't started. Here is what that means for you.

Checked against the product repository on Sept 28, 2026. Several remaining steps are owner decisions (forming the company, legal review, a support address, the first pilot school), not engineering.

Students

Can I use Semester at my school today?

Ready now

The web app in a private beta; sign-up may ask for an invite
Syllabus upload, deadlines you confirm, Today, courses and plans
Sign in with email, Microsoft or Apple
Calendar feed; export and delete in Settings

Built, not switched on

Google sign-in
Google, Microsoft and Zoom data connections
Your school's SSO or official data (no school is connected)

Planned

Paid plans (nothing is on sale)
Full self-serve export and one-step account deletion
An external accessibility audit

Request an invite

Departments

What does our launch require?

Ready now

Students can use the app on their own, with no data from you
A written launch method and a scoping conversation

Built, not yet run with a customer

Department admin role
Cohort resources and action publishing

Needed before a paid launch

A department sponsor and an agreed data scope
An order form reviewed by counsel
Staff training material
Agreed pilot measures and a baseline

Institutions

What is ready now versus in configured beta?

Ready now

This Trust Center, the capability status table and the evidence library
Automated security, database-policy and accessibility checks in CI

Built & tested in a controlled environment

SAML SSO and SCIM
LTI 1.3 for Canvas
Tenant isolation by row-level security

Needed first

A DPA and a written SLA
HECVAT and VPAT/ACR completed
SSO tested against your identity provider; a UAT sign-off
A production restore drill and alerting to a named person

Enterprise

What evidence exists for LMS, migration, reliability and support?

Exists today

An hourly production smoke check
A logical-dump restore rehearsal (passed Sept 21, 2026; production never restored)
Written incident, rollback and key-rotation procedures

Not yet

Native LMS and migration: not offered
Load and disaster-recovery evidence
24/7 on-call: there is one responder

Required

SOC 2 with an auditor (months)
An enterprise SLA and a migration plan
More than one person on call

We'll update this page as gates move. See also the roadmap, capability status and how we present proof.

Home / Policies / Versions

Policy versions

Every policy, its version and its status.

No Semester policy is in force yet. Two are drafted for counsel's review; the rest aren't started. Each will show its effective date, past versions and a plain-language summary of every change.

Policies and their versions. Owner for each: Harrison Rubin, founder. Contact: harrisonjrubin7@gmail.com.
Policy	Current version	Status	Effective	Previous versions	Change summary	Scope
Terms of Service	Draft	Draft for counsel — not in force	None yet	None	First draft, covering individual use	Individual users; schools sign an order form
Privacy Policy	Draft	Draft for counsel — not in force	None yet	None	First draft, written from what the code does today	The web app and this site
Cookie notice	—	Not started	None yet	None	—	This site and the app
Acceptable Use Policy	—	Not started	None yet	None	—	All users
AI Use Policy	—	Not started	None yet	None	—	Semester Intelligence
Data Processing Agreement	—	Not started	None yet	None	—	Institutions
Service Level Agreement	—	Not started	None yet	None	—	Institutions
Refund and cancellation policy	Proposed terms	Not started as a policy	None yet	None	Proposed terms shown on the membership page	Paid individual plans (none on sale)
Accessibility statement	—	Not started	None yet	None	The accessibility center is informational, not a formal statement	The app and this site
Subprocessor list	Register in the Trust Center	Published · not a contract document	None yet	None	Kept in step with the app by an automated test	Every provider that receives data
Student data addendum	—	Not started	None yet	None	—	Institutions

How changes will be announced

Material changes emailed at least 30 days before they take effect
A plain-language summary with every change
Past versions stay public on this page
Institutions also notified through their named contacts

Jurisdiction

Governing law is one of the open decisions in the drafts and is set with counsel when the company is formed. Questions: harrisonjrubin7@gmail.com.

Home / Platform / Availability

Product availability

Who can use what, today.

Every capability, for each kind of customer, with an honest status. Roadmap, beta and generally available features are never blurred together.

Checked against the product repository and the live beta project on Sept 28, 2026. Semester is in a private beta.

Availability by capability and customer type. “Yes” means the capability applies to that customer type; the status says whether it exists yet.
Capability	Individual students	Department	Institution	Enterprise	Status

See the integrations directory for each connector's details, capability status for what each claim rests on, and Are we ready? for launch gates.

Home / Trust / Product quality

Release health

Product quality, with only real numbers.

What version you're using, what's known to be broken, and when things were last checked. If we don't have a real, current value, this page says so.

Release health as of Sept 28, 2026
Item	Current value	Where to look
Public product version	Not yet published. The app doesn't carry public version numbers yet.	—
Latest release date	The last dated changelog entry is Sept 17, 2026; changes since then are listed as unreleased.	The product's tester changelog; highlights on the roadmap
Known critical issues	One high-impact accessibility issue (captions missing on some players), plus launch blockers on our own checklist.	Known issues · Are we ready?
Latest accessibility review	Automated checks on every pull request and a nightly contrast sweep. Manual review: not yet published.	Accessibility evidence
Latest security evidence review	Internal review, dated in the trust updates. Independent review: not yet published.	Trust updates · Capability status
Service health	Checked live from your browser.	System status
Integration status	Only the calendar feed and sign-in providers are live.	Integrations
Planned maintenance	None scheduled.	System status
Major changes	Dated and summarized as they happen.	Trust updates
Uptime, error rates, incident counts	Not yet published. We'll publish them once they're measured over a meaningful period.	—

Home / Pricing / How we price

How we price

No mystery pricing.

What drives the price for each kind of customer, what's included, and the commitments that keep fees predictable. Everything here is planned policy: nothing is on sale yet.

Planned

What drives the price (planned)
Customer	What drives the price	What doesn't
Individual students	The plan you choose: Free or Plus, monthly or annual.	Your data, export or deletion. Never paywalled.
Department	Cohort size, the modules enabled, and a fixed setup fee for configuration and training.	Per-click or per-login charges.
Institution	Enrolled students in scope (in bands), modules, integrations, and the support tier.	Surprise overage for normal use.
Enterprise	Campuses, native LMS scope, migration, identity and support requirements; a custom multi-year agreement.	Hidden professional-services hours.

Implementation

A fixed fee in the written scope: discovery, configuration, approved integrations, UAT, training and launch. Changes to scope are agreed in writing first.

Support tiers

Standard business-hours support, with response targets by severity. Round-the-clock critical support is an enterprise option, once there's more than one person on call.

AI usage

Normal use is included. Where heavy use has a real cost, limits are stated up front and you're told before anything changes.

Migration

Priced separately, from an inventory of what moves: courses, content, assessments and history, including a parallel run and a rollback plan.

Renewals

Price changes need at least 60 days' notice before renewal for institutions, and 30 days for individuals; never mid-term.

No surprise fees

Every fee is in the order form. No charge to export your data or to leave. No automatic upgrades.

Student commercial terms Business-case calculator Talk about a package

Home / Trust / Data & AI transparency

Data & AI transparency

What Semester uses, where it came from, and when AI is involved.

A plain-language account of the information Semester processes, who can see it, how long it's kept, and how AI features work. Semester doesn't replace your institution's official systems or make official academic, financial-aid, registration, disciplinary, medical, legal or admissions decisions.

Draft — pending legal review. This page describes what the code does today, checked against the product repository on Sept 28, 2026. It isn't a privacy policy; the privacy policy is a draft for counsel and not yet in force.

Our plain-language commitment

Source, scope and status on everything important.

The three labels
Label	What it means
Source	Where the information came from
Scope	Who can see or act on it
Status	Whether it's current, verified, estimated, draft, pending, restricted or needs review

Example

Requirement status: Estimated planning result

Source: institution-approved program information · Scope: your private planning workspace · Status: needs official degree-audit confirmation

Illustrative demo data.

What information we process

By category, as the code does it today.

Every table has a written retention answer, kept complete by an automated test. Exact fields and customer variations will be in the privacy policy once it's in force.

Information categories
Category	Examples	Why it's used	Where it lives
Account	Email address, sign-in records	Sign-in, security, support	Supabase (us-west-2, US)
Academic context	Courses, terms, plans, deadlines you sync	Planning and course organization	Your device; Supabase when you're signed in
Student-provided content	Notes, uploads, tasks, preferences	Features you choose to use	Your device; Supabase for what syncs
Institution-provided	Approved course, policy and service data	Authorized institutional experiences	None today: no institution is connected
Usage	Three account-level marks: activation, weekly use, 30-day return. Render timings stay on your device and are never synced	Knowing whether Semester is used, nothing more	Supabase (usage marks only)
AI interactions	The question and the material you send with it	Answering your request	Sent to the AI provider for that request; see below

How AI works in Semester

Helpful, cited, never official.

AI features help you understand your own materials, study, draft non-official work and prepare questions for the right person. They don't make official determinations about registration, degrees, financial aid, accommodations, discipline, admissions, employment or health.

Answers about your documents quote and cite the page, checked against the document
AI output is never labelled institution-verified
Every AI feature has an off switch
You can report an answer with “Fix this”

AI providers (from the subprocessor register)
Provider	When
Anthropic, with Semester's key	AI features for signed-in students who haven't supplied their own key; metered per account
Anthropic or OpenAI, with your own key	Only if you enter your own key on your device
OpenAI, institution-approved	Only after an institution approves the provider and a budget; none has

Your choices and controls

Export your data (today: your device's copy; full export in development)
Delete your account and synced data
Share with a specific person, for a set time, and revoke
Disconnect connected accounts
Choose notifications and quiet hours
Turn AI features off
Make a privacy request

What we don't do

Sell personal information
Load advertising or tracking SDKs (a test fails the build if one appears)
Build behavioral, disciplinary or “risk” scores (the code refuses such metrics)
Train models on your course materials or conversations without explicit authorization
Hide choices or pressure you to share more

Questions, reports and documents

Where to go.

Contacts by topic

Privacy, security, accessibility and AI reports. All reach the founder today; see the contact directory.

Subprocessors

Every provider, with its purpose.

Retention and deletion

How long things are kept.

Policies and versions

AI governance

Boundaries, kill switch, course policy.

Service status

Checked live from your browser.

Home / Company / The Semester Standard

The Semester Standard

The standard we hold ourselves to, gaps included.

Twelve measurable commitments. A standard is only worth anything if it's auditable and its gaps are disclosed, so each one says where we are today and what's missing.

Status checked against the product repository on Sept 28, 2026. Annual progress report: first edition planned.

The Semester Standard, with current status and disclosed gaps
Commitment	Status	What exists	Disclosed gap

Home / Product / Personal Academic OS

Personal Academic OS

Your private, source-aware operating layer for college.

One calm place to start and end your day: what matters, where it came from, and what to do next. It organizes your academic life without becoming an unofficial replacement for your school's systems.

The signature screen

Today.

Scattered information becomes one clear next step, with verified facts kept separate from estimates.

Good morning, Jordan.Illustrative demo data

Your next important action

Finish ECON 210 problem set — due tomorrow at 11:59 PM.

10:00 AM · ECON 210 lecture

1:30 PM · Study block, 45 minutes

3:00 PM · Advisor meeting

Changed since yesterday

Your faculty member updated the Week 5 reading.
Registration opens in 8 days.
Your current plan has one estimated requirement gap.

Recommended next step: review your advising agenda before Thursday.

Institution verified + student planPrivate to youOne item needs official confirmation

What's in it

The architecture, and what exists today.

Personal Academic OS components and their status in the app
Component	What it does	Status

Status checked against the product repository on Sept 28, 2026. Semester is in a private beta.

Boundaries we keep

What it never does.

Write to your school's SIS or LMS by default
Treat AI output as an official record
Activate a share without a recipient, a scope and an end date
Let an AI source cross an institution's boundary
Use real student data in demos or tests
Turn engagement into a consequential score

College is complicated. Your path should not be.

College information is spread across a dozen systems.

I did not build Semester because college lacked information. I built it because students cannot always find, trust, and act on it.

From “what's due?” to “what's next?”

One briefing for the day.

Where you stand, explained.

A term plan with real backups.

Answers that show their sources.

For the people who teach.

Built for the student. Governed for the institution.

Know what matters next.

Launch with one cohort.

One governed layer.

Governed scale.

Sources are visible. Estimates are clear. Privacy is controllable.

Students are telling us they're overwhelmed.

Become a design partner

Useful before you ever sign up.

Registration readiness checklist

Advisor agenda builder

Build my semester

From first visit to a safe exit, every stage has a page.

Watch us build it. Out loud.

Make the next step clearer.

One workspace for the whole semester.

The student modules

The platform modules

What Semester does not do.

Know what matters next.

Three steps to your first plan.

Tell Semester your goal

Build or connect your plan

See one clear next step

Built around your week.

Free to start. Upgrade only when you need more.

Give students one clear place to understand what matters and act safely.

Fragmented systems create unclear student decisions.

Fragmented systems

Staff rebuild context

Unmanaged AI

Uneven experience

Connect, explain, guide, hand off, measure.

Approved systems

Source-aware

Next steps

Official action

Outcomes

Governance from day one.

Standards, not scraping.

A bounded path from pilot to platform.

Discover

Configure

UAT

Launch

Outcome review

Plan an institutional launch.

Start free. Grow with your school.

Students

Exactly how paying would work.

Departments, institutions & enterprise

What shapes an institutional quote

Not sure where to start?

Our pricing rules

Trust is part of the product.

What changed, and whether you need to act.

Things we will not do.

Pick a kind of data. See exactly what happens to it.

Plan your review of Semester before the first call.

Select what your review needs.

Select

Verify

NDA

Document room

Our accessibility commitment, in the open.

How the Trust Center stays current.

Get ready without signing up.

Registration readiness checklist

Advisor agenda builder

We're building the calm layer of college.

Why does navigating college feel harder than the work students are actually asked to do?