Auto-complete VTU online courses. Because 166 lectures is not it.

VTU Autopilot automates marking VTU online course lectures as complete — parallel processing, smart retries, real-time progress, and a clean web UI.

• VTU Autopilot 🚀
  • Table of Contents
  • Features ✨
  • 🏠 Run It Yourself (Service down? No problem.)
    • Requirements
    • Steps
    • No Redis needed
  • How It Works
    • Skip reasons
  • Usage
    • Which mode should I use?
    • Web UI (recommended)
    • CLI (requires .env)
    • Dev mode (auto-reload)
  • Configuration Reference
  • REST API
  • Troubleshooting
  • Admin Endpoints
  • Project Structure
  • Tech Stack
  • Security
  • License
  • Contributing
• Summary
  • Run Locally (3 Commands)
  • License

• ⚡ Parallel Processing — Multiple lectures at once (configurable batch size)
• 🔄 Intelligent Retry Logic — Auto session refresh; failed lectures are retried with clear reasons
• 📊 Real-Time Progress — Server-Sent Events (SSE) for live updates
• 🎯 Job Queue — Multiple jobs queued and processed with concurrency control
• 🔐 Session Management — Auto re-authentication on 401/419/403
• 📈 Statistics — Redis-backed analytics (optional)
• 🖥️ Web UI + CLI + REST API

The hosted service has limited capacity and may occasionally be unavailable.
If it's down — don't wait. You have Git and Node. Run it locally in under 2 minutes.

• Git (to clone)
• Node.js 18+ (LTS recommended)
• Your VTU account credentials

1. Clone and install

git clone https://github.com/vikas-bhat-d/vtu-course-automation.git
cd vtu-course-automation
npm install

2. Start the local server

npm run serve

3. Open in browser

http://localhost:3000

That's it. The web UI is identical to the hosted version — enter your credentials, paste your course slug, and hit go. Nothing is stored anywhere; credentials are only used in memory for the duration of the job.

Finding your course slug: Go to your VTU course page. The slug is the last part of the URL, e.g. https://online.vtu.ac.in/courses/1-social-networks → slug is 1-social-networks.

Redis is only used for the public hosted statistics counter. Running locally works perfectly without it — just skip any KV_REST_API_* env vars.

1. Login          → Authenticates with VTU, stores session cookie
2. Fetch Course   → Lists all lectures across all modules
3. Batch Process  → Sends progress updates in parallel batches
4. Retry Pass     → Re-attempts any lectures that failed or hit the attempt cap
5. Report         → Counts completed vs skipped, explains every skip with a reason

Every skipped lecture now tells you exactly why:

npm run serve
# Open http://localhost:3000

Fill in email, password, course slug → submit → watch the live log.

Finding your course slug:

1. Login to https://online.vtu.ac.in
2. Go to "My Courses" and open a course
3. Look at the URL: https://online.vtu.ac.in/courses/1-social-networks
4. The slug is the part after /courses/: 1-social-networks

Common mistakes:

• ❌ Social Networks (spaces, wrong format)
• ❌ 1 (incomplete)
• ✅ 1-social-networks (correct)

cp .env.example .env   # fill in VTU_EMAIL, VTU_PASSWORD, VTU_COURSE_SLUG
npm start

npm run dev

Web server / REST API: credentials are passed in the request body — no .env needed.
CLI: credentials must be in .env.

POST /api/submit — Submit a job

{
  "email": "you@gmail.com",
  "password": "yourpassword",
  "courseSlug": "1-social-networks",
  "batchSize": 10,
  "maxAttempts": 50
}

Response:

{
  "success": true,
  "jobId": "uuid-here",
  "message": "Job queued"
}

GET /api/status/:jobId — SSE stream (real-time events)

event: phase
data: {"message":"Sneaking past VTU's login page..."}

event: lecture_done
data: {"idx":12,"total":166,"title":"Introduction","status":"skip","reason":"VTU reported zero duration — no video content available for this lecture","completed":11,"skipped":1}

event: done
data: {"completed":120,"skipped":46,"total":166}

event: failed
data: {"message":"Invalid credentials"}

If you set ADMIN_PASSWORD in .env, you can modify server behavior at runtime without restarting:

GET /api/admin/config?password=<pw>&key=value... — View/update runtime settings

Available configuration keys:

• maxConcurrent: Max concurrent jobs (1-10, default: 2)
• batchSize: Lectures per batch (1-50, default: 10)
• maxAttempts: Max retry rounds (1-500, default: 50)
• retryDelay: Backoff delay in ms (0-30000, default: 2000)
• requestDelay: Request spacing in ms (0-10000, default: 500)
• maxRetries: Max retry attempts (1-30, default: 10)

Examples:

# View current config
curl 'http://localhost:3000/api/admin/config?password=yourpass'

# Update batch size and max attempts
curl 'http://localhost:3000/api/admin/config?password=yourpass&batchSize=20&maxAttempts=100'

GET /api/admin/monitor?password=<pw> — Live queue inspector

Shows all queued jobs, running jobs, and current server configuration.

GET /api/admin/notification?password=<pw>&message=...&disabled=... — Global notification banner

Set a maintenance message shown to all users on the web UI:

# Enable a notification
curl 'http://localhost:3000/api/admin/notification?password=yourpass&message=Maintenance%20in%2010%20mins'

# Disable notification
curl 'http://localhost:3000/api/admin/notification?password=yourpass&disabled=true'

vtu-course-automation/
├── automation.js          # Core automation engine
├── server.js              # Express server + job queue + SSE
├── index.js               # CLI entry point
├── lib/
│   └── redis.js           # Redis client & statistics helpers
├── frontend/
│   └── index.html         # Web dashboard (served at /)
├── public/
│   └── index.html         # Static fallback
├── package.json
└── stats.json             # Local stats cache

• Never commit your .env file — it's in .gitignore for a reason
• Credentials passed to the web UI are held in memory only for the duration of the job and never persisted
• Use HTTPS in any production/hosted deployment

MIT © Vikas Bhat D

Processed: 166 Skipped: 0 Total: 166

✓ All done!

## Troubleshooting

**Error: Missing credentials in .env file**
- Ensure `.env` file exists and has `VTU_EMAIL` and `VTU_PASSWORD` set

**Error: Login failed**
- Check your email and password in `.env`
- Make sure your VTU account is active

**Progress stuck at lower percentage**
- Increase `VTU_MAX_ATTEMPTS` in `.env`
- Check your internet connection

## Security

⚠️ **Never commit `.env` to version control!**

The `.gitignore` file already excludes:
- `.env` - Your actual credentials
- `credentials.json` - Legacy credentials file
- `oec-pec-automation-data.json` - Legacy config file

## Other Scripts

### Diary Automation
```bash
npm run start:dairy

Uses index.js for internship diary automation.

Already have Git and Node.js installed? Run VTU Autopilot on your own system in 3 commands — no external servers needed. This saves resources for other students.

git clone https://github.com/vikas-bhat-d/vtu-course-automation && cd vtu-course-automation && npm install
npm run serve

Then open http://localhost:3000 in your browser. That's it!

Why run locally?

• 🔒 Your credentials stay on your machine
• ⚡ Faster processing (no server queue)
• 🌍 Saves bandwidth for students using the web UI
• 📴 Works even with intermittent internet (local retries)

ISC