n8n Workflow: Extract Syllabus PDFs with Gemini & Plan Study

Turn syllabus PDFs into a study plan—automatically

This n8n workflow downloads a syllabus PDF from Google Drive, extracts and cleans the text, uses Google Gemini to find assignments and due dates, then creates Google Calendar deadlines and study-session events—and logs everything to Google Sheets.

What this workflow does

• Manual execution: Run it on demand by clicking Execute workflow in n8n.
• Fetch & extract: Downloads the syllabus PDF from Google Drive and extracts its text content.
• Clean for accuracy: Removes formatting noise to improve parsing and AI results.
• AI assignment + due date detection: Sends the cleaned syllabus text to Google Gemini to return a JSON list of assignments, due dates, and effort estimates.
• Normalize the AI output: Parses the JSON, converts due dates to ISO format, applies default hours, and assigns a priority based on how soon each due date is.
• Generate schedule + calendar events: Creates events for both the assignment deadlines and study sessions for each assignment.
• Log to Google Sheets: Merges event data and appends a standardized row for each event into your configured Google Sheets tab, then outputs a run summary with event counts.

Use cases

• Students or study planners who want a consistent study schedule from a new semester syllabus.
• SaaS operators/automation engineers building study or training operations that rely on recurring PDF syllabi.
• Teams who want a transparent audit trail of generated deadlines and sessions via Google Sheets.

Technical details

• n8n nodes / stack: code, merge, sticky note, Google Drive, Google Sheets, Manual Trigger
• AI: Google PaLM / Gemini API to produce assignments + due dates in JSON
• Requires credentials for Google Drive, Google Calendar, Google Sheets, and Gemini; update the Drive file ID; ensure calendar permissions; and set the Sheets columns to match the expected schema.