Chinese Homework Tracker

I teach junior-high Chinese and keep running grades in one Google Sheet: for every lesson, the test paper, quiz, workbook and handout each have a score, a submission status and a correction status. Recording was never the problem; lookup was. Students lined up at my desk asking what they still owed, and I had to scroll the sheet to answer; writing it on the blackboard took space and was never clear. I did not want a homework management system, only a way for students to see the "owed" part of their own row.

Students in three 7th-grade classes, checking their own progress on their phones during breaks or at home. The three homeroom teachers, who use it to see which students still owe what so they can ask parents to help. And me, the subject teacher across all three classes, scanning the whole class before a lesson instead of writing on the board. All three look at the same page and only switch between "whole class" and "one seat number".

Ship immediately; there was no time for a project. No budget, no server. The data already lived in the sheet, but that sheet is a grade sheet with names and scores, so it could not be published as is. Students use phones, and one extra sign-in step halves the usage.

Take the fastest, most direct path: an Apps Script web app bound to the existing sheet. Data in Google Sheets, execution in Apps Script, code produced with Gemini, the whole chain inside the Google ecosystem, deployable from one account at zero cost. The script reads only the submission and correction columns; grades and personal data never enter its field of view. Access is deliberately anonymous with seat numbers only, trading some exposure for adoption; the cost is that anyone with the URL sees the class's missing work, so the URL goes only to the class.

My job was the boundaries: which columns may leave the sheet (submission, correction), which may not (names, scores), seat numbers only, no sign-in. Gemini produced the whole program within those constraints. In October 2026 the source was brought under git with Claude Code: it first proved the repo matched the live deployment by deployment ID and a version diff, then ran a privacy review and found that names were in the response payload even though the UI never showed them. Per the rules it reported rather than changing anything; after I decided to remove them, it changed one line and updated the same deployment.

In use across three classes. Students can track their own progress; when everything is in, they see "Congratulations, all done!", which makes success visible and motivating. Homeroom teachers can tell parents exactly which items need help. Managing submissions across three classes got easier for me, with no more blackboard lists. The teacher's workflow is unchanged: same sheet, same cells. Two files, 235 lines, zero infrastructure cost.

Keep names out of the payload from day one and send seat numbers only; this time it was fixed after the fact. Make the sheet-tab selection configurable instead of matching the literal "(6)", so a new semester cannot pick the wrong class. As for when it is worth upgrading from Apps Script to a real app: when it must span subjects, needs parent accounts or push notifications, or when the sheet header starts being shaped for the program rather than for people. Until then, one Apps Script page is the right size.