An ADHD academic assistant
Your signal.
through the noise.
The student doesn't check Beacon. Beacon checks on the student.
The academic operating system for college students with ADHD and executive dysfunction. Beacon keeps watch and comes to you, so you don't have to remember to check.
You're on the list. Check your inbox for a confirmation email.
Coming soon to iPhone. Android to follow.
The real barrier
For students with ADHD, the gap isn't information. It's executive function — the distance between knowing and doing.
Most academic tools assume the problem is information. That if students just knew their deadlines, or had better study materials, they'd succeed.
For students with ADHD and executive dysfunction, the barrier isn't knowledge. It's the gap between knowing something is due and being able to start it. Between reading an announcement on Monday and remembering it on Friday when it matters. Between intending to do the reading and finding yourself two hours into something else with no idea how you got there.
More portals and more dashboards don't close that gap. They widen it.
What students actually face
Hidden landmines, quietly detonating.
Every campus has a hundred of these buried in syllabi and policy PDFs. Students with ADHD find out after the fact — on week twelve, when the damage is already done.
Drop-lowest
"Drops your lowest quiz" — only if you submit all six. Skip one and the safety net disappears.
Attendance cap
Four absences allowed. The fifth isn't a warning — it's the grade.
Late penalty stack
10% per day, compounding. One late PSet becomes a letter grade over a weekend.
Beacon reads syllabi and policy language the way no ADHD brain ever will — and translates the traps into plain-English warnings before they trigger.
Why this hasn't been fixed
Every existing tool asks the student to do the work.
Open the app.
The ADHD brain is least likely to check a dashboard exactly when checking one would help.
Configure it.
Reminders, filters, categories. Setup is a task in itself — and for students with executive dysfunction, it never gets done.
Ignore it.
Tools that do push notifications treat every ping the same. Students mute them in week one.
How it works
Background monitoring. Foreground outreach.
01
Connects to Canvas.
Connect with a Canvas access token or your Canvas calendar link, and Beacon pulls in your courses and due dates. Some schools have students request a token; Beacon walks you through it. Add your syllabi and it finds the rules that can cost you points.
02
Scans continuously and stays quiet.
Most of what it sees is noise. Most hours, it says nothing. That restraint is the feature.
03
Reaches out through the channel you check.
A notification on your phone, or a text if you'd rather. Not a screen you have to remember to open.
Also in the app.
- Break any assignment into step-by-step plans.
- See your phone's calendar beside your deadlines, and add a deadline or meeting to it.
- Forward school email and Beacon catches meetings and date changes.
- Open an assignment straight in the Canvas Student app.
- Sign in with Face ID.
- A home-screen widget shows what's due soon and your next class.
Anatomy of a nudge
Name it. Stake it. Start it.
Name the thing.
One specific assignment, in plain language.
Name the stake.
What happens if this slips — concretely.
Name the next action.
The one thing to do right now. Nothing to prioritize.
For an ADHD brain trying to start something hard, "what's the next thirty seconds" is the only question that matters. Beacon answers it every time.
Voice
Same help. Three voices.
Students pick how Beacon Tutor talks to them at signup, and can change it any time. The help is identical — how it lands is everything.
Warm
Caring older sibling.
"Good instinct to ask. Problem 2 is the one to start with: it uses Tuesday's method, and the others build on it."
Direct
Pragmatic roommate.
"Start with problem 2. It uses the method from Tuesday's lecture, and the rest build on it."
Playful
Friend who keeps it light.
"Problem 2 is the boss level in disguise. Crack it with Tuesday's method and the rest fall in line."
Pricing
Two plans. No tricks.
Pro
$6.99 / month
Everything in Basic, plus Beacon Tutor, email drafts, step-by-step plans, and adaptive support.
1 month free, then $6.99/month. Cancel anytime.
Founding-member pricing locked for life. If you subscribe during launch, $6.99/month stays your price as long as your subscription is active.
Basic
$2.99 / month
Canvas sync, deadlines, reminders, what to work on next, syllabus rules, and announcements.
Cancel anytime.
Subscriptions are billed through the App Store. Manage or cancel them in your iPhone's subscription settings.
Why Beacon exists
Built because the system kept getting it wrong.
Beacon was started because of one college student with ADHD. Smart, capable, kept missing the work he meant to do.
The system kept reading him as careless. Lazy. Unmotivated. The truth was the opposite — he was working harder than the typical student just to access what they take for granted. His brain literally couldn't reliably retrieve information from the places the system buried it.
Every existing tool made it worse. Open the app. Set the reminder. Configure the filter. The exact things his ADHD brain couldn't do reliably — especially when overwhelmed, which is exactly when he needed them most. An F because of an attendance policy buried on page seven of a syllabus he'd been expected to memorize in week one. The grade was real. The narrative everyone wrote about him because of it was wrong.
So we built what should have existed. A system that does the watching, so the student can do the work. That surfaces what matters when it matters, in a voice they trust, through a channel they actually check.
Beacon isn't a productivity tool. It's the scaffolding that makes it visible — to students, to professors, to the world — that an ADHD brain that can't hold a syllabus in working memory isn't a less capable brain. It's a brain that needs information at the moment of decision, not buried in PDFs.
Privacy isn't an afterthought.
Beacon needs to see your coursework to do its job. Here's what we promise about that data:
- We don't sell it. Ever.
- We don't show you ads. There aren't any to show.
- We don't use your data to train AI models.
- We encrypt the sensitive parts and let you delete everything, completely, anytime.
BE
CON
Your signal.
through the noise.
Coming soon to iPhone. Android to follow. Join the waitlist and we'll email you the moment it's ready.
You're on the list. Check your inbox for a confirmation email.