imgToICS — Image-to-Calendar with GPT-4o

by Ryan Majd

Convert any event flyer (JPEG/PNG) straight into a ready-to-import .ics calendar file.

Two Ways to Tango:

• GUI (imgToICS_GUI.py) – drag-and-drop window with an “OCR-only (beta)” checkbox.
• CLI (imgToICS_CLI.py) – terminal tool; add -o or --ocr-only to enable the same mode (Does not send image to OpenAI).

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Requirements

Type	What you need
Python	3.8+ (tested on 3.12)
Python packages	install with ./install_py_pkgs.sh or pip install PySimpleGUI requests python-dotenv pillow pytesseract
System package	tesseract-ocr binary macOS brew install tesseract · Ubuntu (usually preinstalled) sudo apt install tesseract-ocr · Windows installer.. Google it
OpenAI API key	Key with GPT-4o multimodal access (funded ≥ $5)

Installation

git clone https://github.com/TheRyanMajd/img-to-ics
cd img-to-ics

# choose ONE of the following
./install_py_pkgs.sh
#   or
pip install PySimpleGUI requests python-dotenv pillow pytesseract

Create a .env file in the project root and add:

OPENAI_API_KEY='sk-xxxxxxxx'

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Quick Start

GUI

python imgToICS_GUI.py

1. Select image.
2. Paste your OpenAI key (auto-fills from .env if present).
3. Choose output folder.
4. (Optional) Tick OCR-only (beta) to keep the flyer image local.
5. Click Generate ICS – your calendar file appears in the folder you picked.

CLI

python imgToICS_CLI.py <image_path> <output_dir> [-o | --ocr-only]

Examples

# Standard multimodal
python imgToICS_CLI.py flyers/hackathon.png ~/CalendarEvents/

# Offline OCR only
python imgToICS_CLI.py flyers/hackathon.png ~/CalendarEvents/ --ocr-only

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How It Works

1. Image mode – base-64 image → OpenAI Vision → iCalendar text.
2. OCR-only – local Tesseract → raw text → GPT-4o (text only).
3. Script extracts everything from BEGIN:VCALENDAR to END:VCALENDAR, names the file from the SUMMARY, and writes it.

Default assumptions:

• All dates are treated as future dates... cause why the hell would you want to book events back in time
• If no end time is provided, the event is set to 3 hours.
  • Maybe I'll add a defaults.json file so that y'all can change these easier...

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Key Libraries

• PySimpleGUI – cross-platform UI
• Pillow (PIL) – image handling
• pytesseract – OCR
• requests – HTTPS calls
• python-dotenv – keeps secrets out of source

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Security & Privacy

• API keys stay in memory only – never written to disk or sent anywhere else.
• In OCR-only mode the image never leaves your computer.
• Always glance over the generated .ics before sharing since AI hallucinates a lot.

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Roadmap

• OCR fallback
• Date disambiguation improvements
• Batch-process entire folders of images
• Unit tests & CI
• Whatever cool idea y'all suggest

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License

MIT — see LICENSE.