emba-course-solver/CHANGELOG.md

Changelog

v1.2.1 — 2026-03-27

Bug Fixes

• Achievable status accuracy — specializations marked "Achievable" are now verified via LP feasibility check against already-achieved specs; previously, a specialization could show "Achievable" based on raw credit potential while actually being infeasible due to credit sharing with higher-priority achieved specializations

v1.2.0 — 2026-03-27

Changes

• Course info popovers — each course now has an info icon that opens a popover showing the course description, instructor(s), and specialization tags, extracted from the J27 Electives PDF; opens on hover (desktop) or tap (mobile), with smart positioning that flips above when near the bottom of the viewport
• Page title and favicon — updated browser tab from "app" with Vite icon to "EMBA Specialization Solver" with a graduation cap favicon in NYU Stern purple
• Viewport-fitted layout — desktop layout now fits within the viewable area without page-level scrolling; each pane scrolls independently

v1.1.1 — 2026-03-27

Changes

• Course replacement — replaced cancelled "Managing Growing Companies" with new course "Innovation and Design" in Summer Elective Set 2; qualifies for Brand Management, Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Marketing, and Strategy (S2)

v1.1.0 — 2026-03-13

Changes

• Cancelled course support — "Managing Growing Companies" (Summer Elective Set 2) is marked as cancelled and rendered with strikethrough, greyed-out styling, and a "(Cancelled)" label; it is excluded from solver computations and decision tree enumeration
• Duplicate course prevention — courses that appear in multiple elective sets (e.g., "Global Immersion Experience II" in Spring Set 1 and Summer Set 1, "The Financial Services Industry" in Spring Set 2 and Fall Set 4) are now linked; selecting one automatically disables and excludes its duplicate from selection and solver calculations, shown with an "(Already selected)" label
• Credit bar tick marks — specialization progress bars now display light vertical tick marks at 2.5-credit intervals for visual scale reference, layered above bar fills with the 9.0 threshold marker remaining visually distinct

v1.0.0 — 2026-02-28

Initial release of the EMBA Specialization Solver.

Features

• Optimization engine — LP-based credit allocation solver with two modes:
  • Maximize Count — finds the largest feasible set of specializations, using ranking as tiebreaker
  • Priority Order — greedily adds specializations in user-ranked order
• Course selection UI — select one course per elective set across 12 sets (Spring, Summer, Fall terms)
• Drag-and-drop specialization ranking — reorder the 14 specializations by priority with touch and keyboard support
• Decision tree analysis — Web Worker enumerates remaining course combinations to compute ceiling outcomes per choice
• Status tracking — each specialization classified as achieved, achievable, missing required course, or unreachable
• Mode comparison — displays what the alternative optimization mode would produce
• Credit bars and allocation breakdowns — visual progress toward the 9-credit threshold with expandable per-course detail
• Credit legend — collapsible explainer for bars, badges, and limits
• Required course labels — courses that are prerequisites for a specialization show "Required for ..." labels
• Algorithm explanations — clear descriptions of how each optimization mode works
• Skeleton loading — placeholder UI while decision tree analysis runs
• Auto-expand achieved specializations — achieved specs show their credit breakdown by default
• Responsive layout — two-panel grid on desktop/tablet, single-column on mobile
• Mobile floating banners — top banner summarizes specialization statuses, bottom banner shows selection progress (N/12); both appear via IntersectionObserver and scroll to their sections on tap
• CSS transitions and animations — cross-fade course pin/unpin, credit bar width changes, status badge color transitions, expand/collapse panels, mode toggle switching, flash on status changes; all respect prefers-reduced-motion
• State persistence — rankings and selections saved to localStorage
• Docker deployment — multi-stage Dockerfile (Node 22 build → Nginx Alpine serve) with Docker Compose, gzip compression, SPA fallback routing, immutable cache headers for hashed assets, configurable port (default 8080)
• Full test suite — data integrity, feasibility solver, optimizer, and decision tree tests via Vitest

Constraints Modeled

• Credit non-duplication (2.5 credits per course shared across specializations)
• Maximum 3 specializations (30 total credits, 9 required each)
• Required course prerequisites for 4 specializations
• Strategy S1/S2 tier system (at most 1 S2 course contributes to Strategy)
• Mutual exclusion from same-set conflicts