# A student built "2.0" for their school's grading system; it grew 9× in four weeks, with only 371 users · Chrome extension

> Source: https://stringers.io/en/ext/chrome_delaoninajamocmiemffpnedafnekpfg.html (Stringers / 什么值得做, generated 2026-11-08)
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> It never really took off. The author posted a self-promo thread in the school subreddit, and midterm grades were coming out, so students needed to calculate attendance and scores. It went to a few hundred users in a month, then slowed in November.

[Chrome extension](https://stringers.io/en/ext/index.md) · written 11-6

Qalam 2.0 ·

# A student built "2.0" for their school's grading system; it grew 9× in four weeks, with only 371 users

**What it is** A free browser extension for Qalam, the grading portal of NUST University in Pakistan: a redesigned interface, attendance-cutoff calculations (how many classes you can still miss), reverse-calculated target grades, and anonymous score sharing among classmates to build a class score distribution.

**Why it took off** It didn't really take off. The author posted a self-promotional thread on the school subreddit just as midterm grades came out, when students needed to calculate attendance and scores. It reached a few hundred users within a month, and by November growth had slowed.

**C** **How you could follow it** If a school's portal has no extension yet, students can build one the same way: lightweight, running locally, open source, and posted on the campus forum before grades come out, to earn credibility and reputation. If you want crowdsourced score distributions, build them on Canvas, Moodle, or other systems many schools share.

C grade: a single-school market caps out at around ten thousand people with no revenue, and the same portal already had 8,000 users with an official endorsement from an earlier mover. It shows the "build an extension for your own school" route works, but following it only gets you a few hundred users. Few people know about it yet

338 users · rating 5.0 (3)

Qalam 2.0 is a free Chrome extension that a student at NUST, Pakistan's National University of Sciences and Technology, built for the school's grades portal. From mid-October to early November, its users grew from 40 to 371. The curve looks like it took off, but in headcount it's a few hundred students at one school. On the same portal, Qalam Helper, which launched five months earlier, already has 8,000 users and was even publicly recognized by the school. This piece covers how it grew, why it stalled there, and what it teaches other student developers.

### "Much better than Qalam Helper"

In Oct 2026 14, a user named Mazhar Mohyudin left an all-caps review on the Chrome Web Store for Qalam 2.0: "MUCH BETTER THAN THE QALAM HELPER". By Nov 6, 2 people had marked it helpful. It's the only written review visible on the store page (Chrome Web Store, 11-06).

On the same day, chrome-stats recorded the user count at 40.

That review sums up the whole story. Qalam is NUST's own student portal, handling grades, attendance, and tuition payments, and students find it hard to use. Qalam Helper was the first extension to fill those gaps; Qalam 2.0 is the second, and its entire pitch is "we do more than the first one."

### What it does

The author, Muhammad Talha, introduced himself on Reddit: "I'm a student at SEECS (School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science) and I built Qalam 2.0, a browser extension for Qalam, available on Chrome and Firefox." He added, "Not affiliated with NUST." The extension only runs on qalam.nust.edu.pk, is completely free, and has no ads or analytics.

The store page lists these features:

- Redesigned interface with dark mode;

- **Attendance** : lecture and lab attendance calculated separately, showing how many more classes you can miss before falling below the school's 75% cutoff (below 75%, you fail the course);

- **Reverse target grades** : pick the grade you want and see how many marks you need from quizzes, assignments, and exams;

- **Class Insights** : enabled per course by hand; classmates who turn it on anonymously share scores, so you can see the class's score distribution, average, and spread;

- A popup dashboard (grades, next lecture room, GPA calculator), alerts for new grades and unpaid tuition, auto-login, one-click course evaluation filling, and showing your last saved grades and timetable when Qalam is down.

The only truly new feature is Class Insights. Qalam itself only publishes the class average, not the distribution, so students who want to know where they rank have to ask classmates one by one. Qalam 2.0 lets people voluntarily upload their scores to plot a curve together. The anonymous ID is a one-way hash of a private number from the tuition bill: only your own Qalam account can generate that ID, and it's the same across browsers, so others can't change or delete your data. This design is worth noting.

The store page itself admits the weakness of this feature: "When only a few people share, the curve only represents those few."

### Where the users came from

| Date | users | Sources |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-06-10 | Chrome version listed | Chrome Web Store |
| 2026-10-14 | 40 | chrome-stats |
| About 10-21 | 117 | ExtScope |
| 10-25 | 195 (version 1.4.1) | Extension Auditor |
| 11-01 | 338 | Chrome Web Store |
| 11-06 | 371,3 ratings, all five stars | Chrome Web Store |

For the first four months almost nobody used it. The turning point was a post the author made on r/NUST titled "Made browser extension that adds what Qalam is missing," pitching the "class curve" and separate lecture/lab attendance math. The post's exact date and upvote count aren't available (Reddit post content isn't public), but judging by the sort order it came after September 7, which lines up with the jump starting in October (inferred).

Timing helped too. 10 to November is when NUST midterm grades come out, and students most want to know "how many more classes can I miss" and "how much do I need on the final for an A." The author kept updating through grading season, and between October 12 and November 1, versions went from 1.1.0 to 1.4.2.

But the week after November 1 only added 33 users; the post's traffic had run its course. There were no ads, no influencer shout-outs, no media coverage, and a search for "Qalam NUST" on X returns zero results.

One thing is easy to mix up: NUST's official 2026 LinkedIn post from January 24 (763 reactions) and the @ThisIsNUST X post honored the author of Qalam Helper, and the vice-chancellor even presented him a medal. Qalam 2.0 has received no official recognition.

### Why it stalled at a few hundred users

**The market is one school.** NUST has over twelve thousand full-time students (per Wikipedia), and only some of them would install a browser extension. Qalam Helper already has 8,000, so the remaining pool is small.

**The early movers have locked in.** These are all products on the same portal:

| Product | Launched | Scale | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Qalam Helper | 2026-01 | 8,000 users, 4.98 ratings averaging 63 stars | Shows how many classes you can miss and compares against official averages; runs fully locally, open source, 32KB |
| NUST Qalam Feedback Genie | 2025-10 | 1,000 users | Only auto-fills course evaluations |
| NustFlow | 2026-01 | 61 users | Auto-login for Qalam and the LMS |
| Two Deez Nust extensions | 2025 | Around 70 each | LMS helper, speeds up course evaluations |
| NUST One(Android) | 2026 | 1,000+ downloads | Phone-side hub for Qalam, the LMS, and class notices, with a "buy me a milk tea" tip button |

Qalam 2.0 essentially bundles the features of Helper, Feedback Genie, and NustFlow, then adds the score curve. It has the most features, yet fewer than a twentieth of Helper's users.

**More features means students weigh the trade-offs more.** It stores passwords for auto-login, uploads scores, reconnects to Qalam every 10 minutes to stay logged in, and ExtScope flags it as a "high-risk permission." Helper is only 32KB, runs entirely locally, and its code is public, so students feel safer installing it.

**The score curve has a chicken-and-egg problem.** For the curve to mean anything, enough people in a class have to turn on Class Insights. With few installs, the curve is inaccurate, which makes it harder to attract new users.

### If it were you

**C. You can learn from it, but copying it isn't worth much.** Building an extension for your school's portal takes one person a few weeks, and a campus forum post can bring in a few hundred users. But the ceiling is the school's student body, and there's no revenue. Qalam 2.0 also shows that at the same school, a second builder, even with more features, struggles to catch the first.

**Who it suits** : current students whose school portal is hard to use and has no extension yet. The payoff is a portfolio and campus reputation. Qalam Helper's author got a school commendation and an official LinkedIn post with 763 reactions, which helps more with internship hunting than with money.

**Who it doesn't suit** : indie developers hoping to make money from it. A single-school extension has no room for payment, the competitors are all free, and NUST One only has a tip button. If someone already built one for your school, don't build "2.0" either.

**How to do it** : start with one pain point, like how many classes you can still miss or how much you need on the final. Run everything locally where possible, keep it open source, avoid storing passwords, so classmates feel safe installing it. If you want a feature like score distributions that needs everyone to participate, don't bet on one school; build on Canvas, Moodle, Blackboard, or other systems many schools share. BetterCampus (formerly BetterCanvas) only targets Canvas and reached 2M users (Chrome Web Store). Qalam 2.0 uses a one-way hash of the tuition bill number as an anonymous ID, an approach you can borrow, but in the US you'd need to first work out student privacy rules like FERPA (inferred).

**How to get users** : post in school subreddits, department groups, and student-union WeChat Official Accounts one to two weeks before grades come out. Iterate quickly on feedback after posting, then ask departments or the school to repost. Qalam Helper took off because of that one official endorsement.

**When to launch** : single-school extensions follow the academic calendar, so launch before grading season. If you miss it, wait for the next semester.

**Signs you've read this wrong** : ① Qalam 2.0 gains over 2,000 users around the next grading season (around January 2027), showing the score curve really drives spread and first movers can't block it; ② someone brings "crowdsourced classmate score distributions" to Canvas and gets tens of thousands of users within months; ③ NUST officially publishes score distributions or blocks third-party extensions, which would close this path.

[Chrome store page ↗](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/qalam-20/delaoninajamocmiemffpnedafnekpfg)

**Research notes: competitor table, acquisition evidence, full research report**

Competitors

| Name | Where | Launched | Scale | How it differs from this one |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Qalam Helper | Chrome | 2026-01-06 | 8,000 users, 4.98 ratings averaging 63 stars; NUST's official LinkedIn commendation post with 763 reactions | Helper only covers how many classes you can miss and comparison with official averages, runs fully locally, and is open source; Qalam 2.0 adds crowdsourced score distributions, predictions, notifications, auto-login, course evaluations, and more, but requires uploading data and broader permissions |
| NUST Qalam Feedback Genie | Chrome | 2025-10-18 | 1,000 users, 13 ratings | Only auto-fills course evaluations, a sub-feature of Qalam 2.0 |
| NustFlow | Chrome | 2026-01-30 | 61 users | Only does LMS and Qalam auto-login |
| Deez Nust / Auto Deez Nust | Chrome | 2025-08 / 2025-10 | 75 / 69 users | An agent interface for the LMS, speeding up evaluation forms |
| NUST One | Android | 2026 | Google Play 1K+ downloads (author's LinkedIn 2026-10-25) | A mobile app that combines Qalam, the LMS and class notices. Not a browser extension |
| BetterCampus (formerly BetterCanvas) | Chrome | 2020-10-18 | 2M users, 4,620 ratings | Built for Canvas, a generic LMS used by thousands of schools. Qalam 2.0 only works at one school |

Where users come from

- **Confirmed** **Reddit r/NUST author self-promo post** : "Made browser extension that adds what Qalam is missing" (u/Independent_Comb225), led with the class curve. Inferred to be posted mid-October, which lines up with users jumping from 40 to 117 and then 338 in mid-to-late October.

- Inferred **Seasonal demand around grade release** : midterm grades come out from 10 to November, and versions shipped in dense bursts 1.1.0 to 1.4.2. This is an inference.

- **Confirmed** **Store search / related extensions** : the Firefox listing is stuffed with a string of search terms, and the Chrome store lists it and Qalam Helper as related extensions of each other.

- Inferred **NUST official LinkedIn / X reposts** : the recall card claims them, but on checking, the official 2026-01-24 post is about Qalam Helper, not Qalam 2.0.

## Why Qalam 2.0 (Chrome extension, delaoninajamocmiemffpnedafnekpfg) appeared to take off

> Bottom line: **it didn't really take off.** It's a free extension a student at Pakistan's NUST built for the university's grades portal, Qalam. Only 371 people have installed it. The "10x in four weeks" figure is growth from dozens of users to a few hundred, driven by the author posting a self-promo thread on r/NUST. In the same small market, **Qalam Helper, which launched half a year earlier, already has 8,000 users** , and NUST's official LinkedIn even praised it. The recall card's "NUST official LinkedIn repost" refers to Qalam Helper, not Qalam 2.0.

### 1. What it is

- A browser extension (Chrome + Firefox) that only runs on qalam.nust.edu.pk, by Muhammad Talha (mtalha.101206@gmail.com), who says he is a student at NUST SEECS. Sources: the [Chrome store page](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/qalam-20/delaoninajamocmiemffpnedafnekpfg) and a summary of the r/NUST post (from a Brave search snippet).

- Features: a redesigned UI with dark mode; **Class Insights** (opt-in per course, where classmates anonymously upload their scores to show the class score distribution, average and spread); target-grade prediction; separate attendance tracking for lectures and labs, showing how many absences are left before the 75% cutoff; popup dashboard (grades, next class room, GPA calculator); alerts for new grades and fee challans; auto-login; one-click course evaluation filling; an offline backup shown when Qalam is down.

- Completely free, with no ads, analytics or trackers. The backend is at qalam-backend-g1v5.onrender.com (source: [ExtScope](https://extscope.org/extension/delaoninajamocmiemffpnedafnekpfg)), and only Class Insights uses it. The privacy policy is in a [gist](https://gist.github.com/mtalha1012/a44c187714aaf91872706ac99cbe3feb), updated 2026-10-18.

### 2. Growth data (reconstructed curve)

| Date | Users | Version | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-05-30 | Firefox version created | — | AMO API |
| 2026-06-10 | Chrome launch | 1.0.4 | Old snapshots from the store / Exa |
| 2026-08-31 | About 27 | — | The extops curve for the recall card (I couldn't re-verify it this time: the extops single page is 404, and there's no row for it in the extops_series table) |
| 2026-10-09 | About 41 | — | Recall card (unverified) |
| 2026-10-14 | 40 | 1.1.0 (10-12 releases) | [chrome-stats](https://chrome-stats.com/d/delaoninajamocmiemffpnedafnekpfg) |
| About 2026-10-21 | 117 (6 days +77) | 1.2.0 | [ExtScope](https://extscope.org/extension/delaoninajamocmiemffpnedafnekpfg) |
| 2026-11-01 | 338,3 ratings | 1.4.2 (11-01 releases) | chromestore library item_snap |
| 2026-11-07 | 371,3 ratings | — | chromestore library item_snap |

- The real jump was concentrated from mid-October to late October (about 40 to 338). After November began, only 33 more users came in during the first week, a clear slowdown.

- The Firefox version has only 28 daily active users (AMO API, 2026-11-06), and 0 ratings.

- Ratings have stayed at 3 the whole time, with no sign of review farming or prompting for good reviews.

### 3. Competitors: several tools built by NUST students crowd the same small market

| Product | Form | Launched | Scale | How it differs from Qalam 2.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| **Qalam Helper** (abdullahch192 / Abdullah Hassan) | Chrome + Firefox, [open source](https://github.com/AbdullahHassan192/Qalam-Helper) | 2026-01-06 | Chrome 8,000 users, 4.98 stars from 63 ratings (chromestore library / chrome-stats 11-06); Firefox 26 DAU | Does only two things: shows how many classes you can still miss, and compares your scores with the class average that Qalam publishes itself. Runs fully locally, 32KB. No score distribution curve, auto-login or evaluation filling. It was out for 5 months before the school endorsed it. |
| NUST Qalam Feedback Genie | Chrome | 2025-10-18 | 1,000 users, 13 ratings | Only auto-fills course evaluations, essentially Qalam 2.0's "Survey Filler" split out on its own |
| NustFlow | Chrome | 2026-01-30 | 61 users | Only does LMS and Qalam auto-login (self-promo post on r/NUST 2026-02-01) |
| Deez Nust / Auto Deez Nust | Chrome | 2025-08 / 2025-10 | 75 / 69 users | An "agent interface" for the LMS, speeding up evaluation forms |
| NUST One(zivxio,M Hamza) | Android App | 2026 years | Google Play 1K+ downloads (author's [LinkedIn 2026-10-25](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/m--h-a-m-z-a-_androiddev-buildinpublic-softwareengineering-activity-7520020115229188096-jaNS)) | A mobile app that combines Qalam and the LMS, and class reps post course notices. Not a browser extension |
| NUST Student: Qalam, LMS & GPA | Android APK | Not verified | Not verified | A mobile GPA and portal aggregator |
| Big companies / official | — | — | — | Qalam itself publishes class averages, but has no distribution or prediction. The school hasn't built anything similar |
| A similar tool at another university: BetterCampus (formerly BetterCanvas) | Chrome | 2020-10 | 2M users, 4,620 ratings (chromestore library) | Built for Canvas, a generic LMS, so one extension can cover thousands of schools. Qalam is NUST's own Odoo portal, usable at just one school |

### 4. Where users come from

1. **r/NUST author self-promo post (confirmed)** : ["Made browser extension that adds what Qalam is missing"](https://www.reddit.com/r/NUST/comments/1xda64n/made_browser_extension_that_adds_what_qalam_is/), posted by u/Independent_Comb225. The post leads with "Class curve" and "separate attendance for lectures and labs." The Reddit body was blocked, so I only got summaries from Brave and Jina; I did not get the vote count or the posting date. The post ID sits right after 2026-09-07 (1w9t1co), which fits the October jump, so I infer it was posted in mid-October. Unverified.

2. **Grade-release timing (inferred)** : 10 to November is when midterm grades come out, so attendance alerts and score curves are exactly what people need. Frequent releases (10-12, 1.1.0,11-01, 1.4.2) also suggest the author is iterating on user feedback.

3. **Store search** : the Firefox listing packs in a string of search terms (NUST, Qalam, SEECS, GPA calculator, NUST grading curve...), picking up a little on-store search traffic. The Chrome store also lists it and Qalam Helper as "related extensions" of each other.

4. **NUST official LinkedIn / X repost: not it.** The [LinkedIn post](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/nustofficial_nust-definingfutures-proudlynust-activity-7420716299250618369-Ml7s) from NUST's official 2026-01-24 (763 reactions) and [@ThisIsNUST's X post](https://x.com/ThisIsNUST/status/2014951766073413767) both credit Qalam Helper: the vice-principal even awarded the author a medal. The author's own LinkedIn post, 2026-01-07, has 93 comments. The recall card credited this channel to Qalam 2.0, which is wrong.

5. No ads, influencers or media coverage seen. Searching "Qalam NUST" in the x-radar corpus returns 0 results.

### 5. Why it grew (and why it stopped there)

- **The demand is real, and it comes back every semester** : NUST's 75% attendance cutoff (falling below it earns an XF) and the pain of working out your standing by hand after grades are released are old problems for the whole student body. Qalam Helper's comments are the evidence ("they should hire you", "why wasn't this available during my past two semesters").

- **Qalam Helper has already taught this market** : students are used to installing extensions for Qalam. Qalam 2.0 built a "more complete 2.0" on top of an existing need, and one Reddit post was enough to pull in a few hundred people.

- **Its added selling point is the Class Insights score distribution curve** : Qalam publishes only averages, not distributions. Classmates who opt in can see roughly where they stand. It is the only feature that needs a backend and the only one with network effects. But the sample depends on voluntary sharing, so with few installs the curve is inaccurate (the listing admits "With only a few sharers, the curve reflects only them"), which makes cold start hard.

- **The ceiling is low** : NUST has over 12k full-time students (per Wikipedia), and only some of them use Chrome extensions. The rival Qalam Helper already has 8,000 installs, which leaves little room.

- **More features, higher trust barrier** : it stores passwords for auto-login, uploads scores, and keeps sessions alive every 10 minutes, and ExtScope flags it as "high-risk permissions." By comparison, Qalam Helper is 32KB and runs fully locally, which makes it easier for students to trust.

### 6. Differentiation

- Compared with Qalam Helper: it adds **anonymous crowdsourced score distributions from classmates** (Helper only compares against Qalam's published averages), plus target-grade back-calculation, separate lecture and lab attendance, notices, auto-login, evaluation filling and an offline backup. In effect it bundles the features of three tools, NustFlow, Feedback Genie and Helper, and adds the distribution curve on top.

- This difference **is why it grew from 40 to 300** (the Reddit post's title and first selling point are both "Class curve"), **but not enough to pass the first mover** : it has under a twentieth of Qalam Helper's users, and growth was already slowing in November.

### 7. Visibility and copycats

- No revenue, and no plan to charge. No media or X accounts have written about it. It only spread in the r/NUST subreddit.

- Copycats: no new copycats. If anything, it is itself a follower of Qalam Helper. The same school and portal already have 5+ extensions and 2 apps, so the niche is crowded.

### 8. What to borrow

- **"Wrap a plugin around one institution's clunky portal"** is a classic student-developer play: the pain is concentrated, the channels are free (campus subreddits, official department accounts), and the school may even praise you (as with Qalam Helper). But each school has to be built separately, which makes it hard to turn into a business. To scale, you have to bet on generic LMSs like Canvas, Moodle or Blackboard, as BetterCampus does.

- **"Crowdsourced class score distributions"** is the genuinely interesting feature: schools publish only averages, and users have to piece together the distribution themselves. It would also work for generic LMSs like Canvas, but it has to solve cold start (you need enough classmates installed) and privacy trust (it uses one-way hashing of the invoice code as an anonymous ID, which is worth borrowing).

- Post to attract users around grade-release season, then iterate fast after the post.

### 9. Still unclear

- The exact Reddit post date, vote count and comment count (body 403). The user curve from 8 to early October comes from extops data relayed in the recall card; I could not verify it.

- Between 2026-10-21 and 11-01, whether those 200+ people were pushed by other forces (like class WhatsApp groups or college club reposts) is unproven; no evidence found.

- Whether 'one-click course evaluation fill' violates school rules or triggered a school ban. Not verified.

This article was written by AI from public data and the data we collect daily. Numbers are sourced, and inferences are labeled.