"Way better than the real one": a Zurich high schooler used Claude to rebuild the whole canton's school intranet app

Every student at every high school and vocational school in the canton of Zurich has to open the same school intranet daily to check timetables, grades and absences, and the official app has only 3.3 stars. In 2026 October, a student wrote an unofficial version and used TikTok in Swiss German to call classmates to download it. In a month it reached 55 ratings and 4.67 stars and stayed in the top 30 of the Swiss Education Top Free chart. What's worth looking at is the playbook: find a school system everyone is forced to use and that does it badly, plug into the moment the old alternative breaks, and add a layer of social features between students. Below: how it came up, and whether outsiders can copy it.

Oct 6, seven TikToks

The app was listed on 2026-10-05. The next day, the TikTok account @tam.intranet.sekll posted 7 videos in one go. The most-viewed one had just one line: "Eifach TAM Intranet Sek II im app store igeh oder de Link i de Kommentär" (just search TAM Intranet Sek II in the App Store, or use the link in the comments), tagged #gymi #kantonsschulelimmattal #kantonsschule, with 5,143 views and 196 likes. Another was more direct:

Ladet eu alli mini Intranet app abe, sehr viel Ziit investiert und sie isch um WELTE besser als die echti… Everyone download my intranet app, I've put so much time into it, and it's WAY better than the real one…

After that, roughly every 1–3 days, 3–5 posts: feature teasers ("you'll soon be able to customize your pet, this is just a preview"), answers to questions, casual videos shot lying in bed. By 11-05 there were 50 posts total, about 62k views, and 189 followers. Those numbers mean nothing elsewhere, but its target audience is students at a few dozen Kantonsschulen in Zurich, and one or two thousand views per post already covers that circle quite well.

The developer on the App Store is called Thomas Graf, with only this one app under his name. 10-17 has a five-star review titled "BESTE INTRANET APP", body "Han sie zwar selber programmiert aber trotzdem" (even though I programmed it myself, still five stars), by a reviewer named Isaigraf. Taken together, it's most likely a student who wrote it, with the developer account under a parent's name (inference, unverified). The same day, a TikTok post said "Please leave a good review, thanks 🥹".

What it is

The canton's high schools and vocational schools all use one school intranet called Intranet Sek II (run by TAM / IN2), where timetables, grades and absences live, and students have no choice. This app logs in with the student's school credentials (including Microsoft two-factor) to pull the data, and rebuilds it:

• Timetable: day and week views, with substitutions, cancelled classes and exams marked, plus home-screen widgets and Live Activities;
• Grades: weighted averages and Swiss-specific Pluspunkte, with manual grade entry and reverse calculation of "what you need on the next test to hit your target";
• Absences: one tap to generate an excuse-note PDF; also connects to Moodle and commute routes.

At this point it's just "a better official app". What really sets it apart is the second layer: Community (school-wide polls, idea submissions, class views, class-vs-class comparison), Studio (share study materials to earn TAM coins), pets, card skins, rankings. The store page states it is "not an official product of TAM, IN2, your school, or the canton of Zurich". German only, iOS only.

The money-making is small: TAM coin packs, a Community Plus annual subscription (20% more coins earned), card skins at CHF 1.20 each, and a class graduation-newspaper site called Maturaziitig where a whole class pays CHF 20 once. It has never charted in Switzerland's grossing chart, and revenue is probably very small (inference).

The update pace is absurdly fast: it went from 1.0 to 1.3.6 in a month, over a dozen versions. The author said on TikTok "Claude ah hintergrund" (Claude in the background). The notes for 11-05 read: "better class views and comparison on iPad, more complete class lists, commute routes no longer give outdated home-trip suggestions". A one-student product with the iteration rhythm of a small team.

Why this autumn

This spot used to be taken, and this autumn it happened to open up:

(App Store Switzerland, 11-06; gymial.ch; schoolspace.ch)

August school starts, the old replacements broke and nobody fixed them, the official one is still a pain to use, and a month later this one goes live. Student reviews keep comparing it to the same two: "far better than in2mobile" and "better than the real intranet".

So it helps to separate why it took off: "it's maintained and works" is why people came, since the old competitor's users were already looking for a replacement; "social and gamified" is why it spread among classmates, since school-wide polls, class comparison and rankings only work if classmates use it together, and pets and card skins give people something to show off on TikTok. The first alone would slowly eat the old competitor's base; with the second, it squeezed into the top 30 of the education free chart within a month.

How big the numbers are

(App Store Switzerland)

7 days, 10 new ratings, charting in only one Swiss store. The Swiss Education Top Free chart has a low bar: over this period the official IN2 Mobile bounced between ranks 52 and 170, and #29 likely corresponds to tens to a couple hundred downloads a day (inference, unverified).

The reviews read like students: "goated intranet app", "jedes update machts die app besser und besser" (every update makes the app better and better), "Werauimmer du bisch, Dankeee! Du hesch mis lebe so vill eifacher gmacht" (whoever you are, thank you! You made my life so much easier). Someone also asked it to bring back the ranking feature.

Where users come from

Only one channel has evidence: the author's own TikTok. The approach is simple and hard for outsiders to copy:

• Swiss German colloquial speech, not standard German;
• tags use school names directly: #kantonsschulezürichnord #kantonsschuleenge #rämibüel #kantonsschulelimmattal;
• download links in comments, with captions repeatedly telling people to search the full name in the App Store;
• openly asking classmates to leave a good review.

The name was also chosen for search: "TAM Intranet Sek II" = the old competitor's name "TAM Intranet" + the official system name "Intranet Sek II", so students searching either will find it. How much traffic App Store search brings can't be seen. No ads or press coverage were found, and X had zero mentions in 30 days. Almost no one outside knows about it.

The risks are spelled out

• The data could be cut off at any time. It pulls data through students' own school logins, not an official API. Gymial shut down for exactly that reason; if IN2 or the canton tightens things, it could stop working overnight. The French precedent is more direct: a high schooler's Pronote alternative, "Papillon", went viral among French students in early 2025, and the Pronote vendor then published a note about "recommendations regarding Papillon", stressing that its own product was the one certified by the state.
• Copyright. The pet is a Totoro, and the author has said "I have no rights to it at all".
• The market is this small. One canton, one language, tens of thousands of students, and in-app purchases priced at a couple of francs.

If it were you

C: the playbook is worth learning, but following this one isn't worth it. It took off thanks to three things outsiders can't get: the author was the user, spoke classmates' dialect, and sat inside the school's TikTok circle; and it earns little while the data could be cut off at any time.

• Who it fits: students still in school (or recently graduated, still close to younger classmates) who can code; where your school or region forces a school system that happens to be bad and whose old alternative has stopped updating. For you, it's a good project to build a portfolio, gather users, and get the experience of "what I built is used school-wide".
• Who it doesn't fit: indie developers who want to make money from it; people outside that school circle who don't speak the local language; people unwilling to take on the risk of being shut down by the school or vendor at any time.
• How to do it: pick a mandatory school system with poor reviews, and check two things first: the official app's star rating, and whether the existing student alternative has stopped updating and whether reviews are complaining. The window is the term when the old alternative breaks. First make timetable, grades and widgets clearly better than the official app; then add what gets classmates to play together (class-wide polls, class comparison, rankings); monetize with cheap skins, coins and a "whole class pays once" graduation keepsake. Mind that the big systems already have players: France's Pronote has Papillon, and German-speaking areas have WebUntis with the open-source BetterUntis; the opening is more likely in small regions and small systems.
• How to get users: copy what it did: post on TikTok in local slang, tag school names, put the link in comments, name it after the system and the old competitor, and openly ask classmates to rate it. You need to be that student yourself; paid acquisition isn't worth it for an audience this small.
• When to be early: the first month or two after school starts. Timetables and grades matter most then, and that's when people most want to switch apps; miss this term and you wait for the next back-to-school season.
• What would mean you read it wrong: ① its ratings are still under 2027 by early 100 and it has dropped out of the top 100 on the free chart, meaning the Zurich circle is saturated and the ceiling in a small region is lower than it looks; ② the school or IN2 issues a notice restricting unofficial clients, or its login starts failing, meaning the lifeline of this kind of product isn't in its own hands; ③ the author's updates slow down, meaning one student can't sustain a dozen-plus versions a month, and the social layer won't keep people.