Defense Preparation Coach

About

The PhD defense is the highest-stakes single event of doctoral life — and the one almost nobody systematically rehearses. Defense Preparation Coach turns the final weeks from passive re-reading into a structured rehearsal program: you write the questions your committee will actually ask, draft answers tight enough to deliver in 1:30–3:00, and speak them aloud against a clock with honest self-rating.

All analysis is local. Your questions, draft answers, vulnerability notes, examiner profiles, and practice ratings stay in IndexedDB and chrome.storage.local on your device. No microphone, no recording, no AI runtime, no document upload — ever.

★ WHAT IT DOES
1. Eight-category question bank — Capture your own questions across the categories every committee draws from: foundational, methodology, theoretical, findings, limitations, future work, big picture, provocative. Sort, filter, tag by difficulty, assign to an expected examiner.
2. Live speaking-time estimation — The drafting editor reads your answer at the academic speaking rate (130 wpm) and updates the speaking-time estimate as you type. A non-blocking compress warning when you drift past 3:00.
3. Practice mode with self-rating — Full-side-panel takeover: surface a question, hide your draft, run the timer, then prompt three sliders (covered key points, stayed on time, sounded confident). Sessions accumulate.
4. Weighted practice queue — Lower-rated and longer-untouched questions weigh more heavily, so the answers you most need to rehearse come up most often, without ever fully retiring a mastered one.
5. Vulnerability map & examiner profiles — Unlimited entries for the weaknesses you fear most (with a prepared response) and for each committee member's role, expertise, and likely angles.

★ PRIVATE BY DESIGN
- Your defense prep content never leaves your device.
- No AI runtime, no telemetry, no analytics, no account.
- No microphone access, no audio recording, no transcription — ever.
- The only outbound network request the extension can make is the optional product-updates sign-up: just your email + a "defense-preparation-coach" tag, only if you tick the box.

★ FREE
Every feature is unlocked for everyone. No subscription, no tiers, no account, no payment.

★ WHAT THIS IS NOT
- Not an AI examiner. Nothing here generates your questions, drafts your answers, or evaluates your reasoning.
- Not a voice analyzer. Practice mode is a stopwatch and a self-rating dialog — no microphone is ever requested.
- Not a curated question library. You write your own questions; the eight categories are the only seeded scaffolding.
- Not a guarantee of outcome.

★ HOW IT WORKS UNDER THE HOOD
- Side panel only — no host page interaction, no content scripts, no DOM scraping.
- IndexedDB (via the idb library) for the question bank, practice log, vulnerabilities, and examiners.
- chrome.storage.local for your defense date, thesis title, and (optional) email opt-in.
- Speaking-time estimator: word count / 130 wpm, clamped at a 1-second minimum.
- Practice queue: weighted ranking over rolling self-rating average and recency.

Built by Dr. Rafiq Muhammad, PhD, for graduate students and early-career researchers under the GradSummit brand. Pairs naturally with Defense Prep Workbench (the structural 8–12 week scaffold) — the Workbench gives you the curated content; the Coach drills the delivery.