PaperOralKit

Who it's for

University professors and TAs who currently rely on Turnitin similarity scores plus ad-hoc or skipped oral questions

The problem

time (1-3 hours of manual prep per paper; AI submission volume makes it unsustainable)

How to build it

Web app with PDF upload, one-click script export to PDF/Markdown, optional student mock-timer link

How it makes money

Individual instructors pay $9/mo or $4 per extra paper; departments buy $400/yr site licenses because generic ChatGPT questions lack page citations and audit logs they need for grade appeals

Why it doesn't exist yet

Incumbents (Turnitin, Gradescope, LMS vendors) stay on text-similarity and auto-graders because oral-script generation needs reliable long-context citation tying they treat as low-priority edge case; indie ships the narrow PDF-to-script loop in weeks

First users

Free single-paper tier posted to r/Professors, Danish university staff lists, and the HN thread on the new oral-defense law within 48h of launch

Build size

1 person x 5 weeks (PDF text+structure extract, constrained question gen, script UI + export, mock timer; exclude LMS plugins, video proctoring, languages beyond EN/DA)

Biggest risk

Turnitin or Google Classroom ships a native 'generate oral questions from uploaded paper' button in the next academic term

Conditions for a hit (all 3 required)

• Accepts thesis PDF ≤80 pages and returns exactly 8 questions each with page citation in under 90 seconds
• Produces a printable defense script containing model answer outlines plus two follow-up probes per question
• Includes student mock mode that enforces 15-min timer and flags missing key phrases from the outline

How it's judged (in 6 months)

Product Hunt daily top 5 or ≥300 university-affiliated email signups with at least 50 paid conversions(judgment date 2027-02-09)

AI self-confidence 48/100 — self-reported likelihood of meeting the criterion, not a business success rate