BruinWatch

Real-time UCLA course seat availability monitor.

BruinWatch is a lightweight Python terminal app that monitors the UCLA Schedule of Classes for open seats in your target courses. It polls the registrar's live enrollment data every 3 minutes, color-codes availability at a glance (green = open, red = full), and fires off desktop notifications + system sounds the moment a spot opens up.

Features

• Multi-course watchlist — monitor as many courses as you want in a single session
• Lectures + discussions — automatically fetches discussion/lab sections under each lecture
• Color-coded output — green rows for sections with open seats, red for full/closed
• Desktop notifications — push alerts via plyer (Windows, macOS, Linux)
• System sound alerts — audible beep when a seat opens
• Auto-retry — resilient to transient network errors with configurable retry logic
• Zero config — no API keys, no tokens, no login required

Quick Start

# Clone the repo
git clone https://github.com/<your-username>/BruinWatch.git
cd BruinWatch

# (Optional) Create a virtual environment
python -m venv .venv
.venv\Scripts\activate      # Windows
# source .venv/bin/activate  # macOS / Linux

# Install dependencies
pip install -r requirements.txt

# Run
python bruinwatch.py

You'll be prompted to select a term, enter a subject area (e.g. COM SCI) and course number (e.g. 32), and optionally add more courses. BruinWatch then polls every 3 minutes and alerts you when seats open.

Example Output

══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════
  [2026-02-26 14:30:00]  Polling 1 course(s)...
══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════

  ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  COM SCI 32 — 32 - Introduction to Computer Science II
  ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  Section          Status     Enrolled       Spots Left   Waitlist
  ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  Lec 1            Open       63/180         117          0/30          ← green
    Dis 1A         Open       52/60          8            0/10          ← green
    Dis 1B         Open       7/60           53           0/10          ← green
    Dis 1C         Open       4/60           56           0/10          ← green
    Dis 1D         Closed     0/0            0            N/A           ← red

Requirements

• Python 3.10+
• requests — HTTP client
• plyer (optional) — cross-platform desktop notifications

How It Works

BruinWatch reverse-engineers UCLA's public Schedule of Classes API:

1. CourseTitlesView — resolves a subject + catalog number into internal course tokens
2. GetCourseSummary (root) — fetches lecture-level enrollment data
3. GetCourseSummary (sub-level) — fetches discussion/lab sections under each lecture

No authentication is needed; it uses the same public endpoints as the SOC website.

Configuration

Constant	Default	Description
POLL_INTERVAL	180	Seconds between poll cycles
RETRY_DELAY	10	Seconds between retries on failure
MAX_RETRIES	3	Max retries per poll cycle

Edit these at the top of bruinwatch.py.

License

MIT