{A university thesis class: Automation and its pitfalls} {Peter Flynn} {Despite the large collection of thesis classes available, there are always features that an institution needs which can better be met by writing Yet Another Thesis Class. There are also variations in the quality and availability of documentation, assumptions about preloaded packages, and the ease (or otherwise) with which the author can modify the layout. In the case of \acro{UCC}, the official requirements were very simple, avoiding the tendency to overspecify details found in some university formats. The class was also required to be generally applicable to any discipline, so only a minimum of packages was needed (although this turned out to be more than anticipated). The major component was an attempt to automate as much of the front matter as possible, based on options to tokenize the discipline and class of degree. This was done to avoid accidental omissions, variations, and misspellings in the titling (or even deliberate rewording); and to ensure that the relevant compulsory components appeared in the right place without the author having to do anything. The result has been piloted with 20--30 PhD candidates for a year, and needs only a few final changes before release. Two other institutions in the state have already expressed an interest in basing their own thesis classes on this one. }