Codelab Compass helps GDG organizers plan a workshop without starting from a blank page. Answer six questions — audience level, topics, time available, machines, goal, start time — and you get a full agenda: timed blocks, an official Google codelab for each one, and a file ready for your calendar (.ics, Google Calendar, Markdown). Two rules: no session over 2 hours, no block over 45 minutes. One HTML file, no build. It works without AI; with Gemini it also writes facilitator notes.
“The best decision was the boring one: making it work without AI. Mid-test, Gemini returned a 503. The app didn't break — it built the agenda with its own rules and kept going. I assumed it was my API key. It was Google running out of capacity for that model. Connecting a model is easy. Deciding what happens when it doesn't answer is the real work.”