AI in Action — NPS Marine Develops “Odyssey” to Manage Complex Projects, Tackle Workload

When Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) computer science student U.S. Marine Corps Capt. Kyle Hicks heard a fellow research team member vent about the difficulty of coordinating the complex, interconnected efforts of their project, he didn’t blink an eye. Rather, through his own initiative, Hicks built an artificial intelligence (AI) powered program management tool he coined “Odyssey” to help manage the overwhelming workload.

In just days, Hicks utilized AI to code a workable prototype project management tool that included automated reporting, task management and recommendation features, credential login, timeline scoping, and more — all enabled through AI.

“Capt. Hicks recognized a genuine need and capability gap, then took the initiative to build something that addresses it directly,” noted U.S. Marine Corps Maj. Dillon Pierce, Ph.D., a research assistant professor with the NPS Space Systems Academic Group (SSAG).

“What stands out to me most is not just the tool itself, but what its development represents,” Pierce continued. “Odyssey shows a great deal of promise as an example of how technically minded officers can identify problems, rapidly develop solutions, and deliver capabilities at the speed of relevance.”

“That is significant,” he stressed, “because it demonstrates how individuals with the right technical foundation can make a tangible difference. They are not limited to describing problems or waiting for a formal acquisition pathway to produce a solution. They can help identify a need, understand the operational context, prototype a solution, and quickly iterate with users.

“In that sense, Odyssey is a strong example of the kind of innovation we need more of,” Pierce added, “Marines and naval officers who combine technical skill, operational understanding and initiative to close capability gaps from the bottom up.”

In many ways, Hicks’ program management tool epitomizes the way AI is envisioned to be applied on a daily basis across the U.S. Department of War. Rather than an abstract academic exercise in coding AI, Hicks says, Odyssey emerged from a practical challenge familiar across the military — managing complex, fast-moving projects with limited time and manpower.

Hicks is part of a team supporting research tied to a low-cost tactical missile effort led by Pierce. The project — spanning multiple lines of effort including flight software, modeling and sensor development — required coordination among several contributors, each working on separate pieces of code and tasks.

Traditional tools weren’t cutting it.

“We were using Teams, Jira and other project management tools,” Hicks explained. “But you still have to manually create tasks, read through updates, and try to absorb everything to figure out what’s going on.”

And that administrative burden became the target for automation. Rather than writing software line-by-line, Hicks turned to large language models to generate nearly all of Odyssey’s code.

Working inside the Visual Studio Code development environment, he guided the AI using detailed prompts, screenshots and precise instructions.

“The programming I learned in school wasn’t even in the same language as this app,” Hicks said. “What I learned was how to structure the problem and tell the AI exactly what I wanted.”

After the initial prototype, it took Hicks just a few weeks to evolve Odyssey into a functional, cloud-hosted platform accessible to other users at NPS.

The speed of development — compressing what might traditionally take months into weeks — highlights one of AI’s most immediate impacts, dramatically lowering the barrier to building useful digital tools.

At its core, Odyssey functions as an intelligent project manager. The platform integrates task tracking, timelines and collaborative tools with an embedded AI agent capable of analyzing the full scope of a project. Users can connect code repositories from platforms like GitHub or GitLab, allowing the system to read and interpret ongoing technical work.

From there, Odyssey automates many of the most time-consuming aspects of project management. With a single command, the AI can assess whether a project is on schedule, identify tasks that are falling behind, recommend adjustments to timelines or scope, as well as summarize progress across multiple contributors.

“It basically does all the project management busy work for you,” Hicks said, “so you can focus on actually doing the work.”

The system also includes collaborative chat features, where team members can query the AI directly within a project workspace. A simple command can generate status reports, list active goals, or summarize discussions for the entire team.

One of Odyssey’s most powerful capabilities lies in its ability to synthesize information across traditionally siloed workflows. In complex military projects, individuals often work independently on separate components, whether software code, hardware systems or analytical models. Understanding how those pieces fit together can be difficult.

Odyssey addresses this by pulling data from multiple sources into a single environment and allowing the AI to interpret relationships between them.

“You can ask it what progress has been made in the last two weeks on a specific repository,” Hicks said. “It will tell you who committed code, how often and what they were working on.”

Automated and continuously updated, this kind of visibility offers commanders and project leads a clearer picture of progress without requiring hours of manual review.

Odyssey exemplifies a shift toward what defense leaders often call human-machine teaming: not replacing personnel, but augmenting their effectiveness. In Hicks’ case, AI handled the technical heavy lifting of coding, while he provided direction, intent and quality control.

That same dynamic plays out within the platform itself. Rather than replacing project managers, Odyssey acts as an assistant by processing data, identifying patterns, and offering recommendations that humans can accept or refine.

As Hicks continues working toward his NPS master’s in computer science, potential further refinements to Odyssey are representative of the kind of deck plate innovation that AI enables, and the DOW needs more of.

“The things that make headlines regarding the military applications of AI are usually exquisite projects like Project Maven and Replicator, but what is potentially even more interesting is the impact we’re seeing it have on day-to-day tasks,” stated U.S. Army Maj. Neal MacDonald, former NPS [AI Task Force](https://nps.edu/web/ai) operations officer.

“Mundane things like writing awards, making slides for meetings, and sorting through paperwork that previously consumed hours of the day can now be accomplished in minutes, giving that time back for other activities like training and readiness,” MacDonald said.

“Because of the ability of modern Generative AI models to help quickly code and develop software tools, even service members with no formal computer science or programming background are able to create bespoke capabilities for their units,” he continued. “They bring their problems, friction points, and experience to the table, and AI helps them put it into a solution.”

While Odyssey is a single project developed by one officer, it represents a larger shift already underway across the U.S. military. AI is no longer confined to high-level strategy or advanced weapons systems. It is increasingly embedded in the everyday work of service members, helping them write code, manage projects, analyze data and make decisions faster.

For Hicks, the takeaway is straightforward.

“If you have a clear idea of what you want,” he said, “you can steer the AI to build it.”

NPS, located in Monterey, California, provides warfighting-focused graduate education, including classified studies and interdisciplinary research, to advance the operational effectiveness, technological leadership and warfighting advantage of the naval service. Established in 1909, NPS offers master’s, doctoral and distance-learning certificate programs to U.S. Department of War military and civilian students, as well as to international partners, to develop warfighters and leaders who can think critically, solve complex operational problems and deliver mission-ready solutions through advanced education and research.