Xams

I worked as Founder and Developer on Xams from February 2023 through March 2025. The experience is listed as Exams on LinkedIn; Xams is the product name used here. I built it with a close friend after we sat our iGCSE exams and kept hitting the same friction in how schools timed and coordinated papers. What started as ExamTimer grew into ExamManager — exam scheduling, classroom timing, and staff workflows for schools.

The original xams.app domain is no longer active. Auth and backend services are offline; the frontends stay up as a portfolio showcase across three Vercel deployments:

Product Evolution

We iterated the product several times — from a focused classroom timer into a fuller exam manager, then a SaaS-shaped rewrite — before parking the stack as public demos.

Impact & Responsibilities

• Exam Timing: Built the classroom timer flow for reading time, writing time, extra time, and clear status feedback during live exams.
• Scheduling & Dashboards: Designed exam lists, create-exam flows, and student-facing views so schools could see what was running and what was next.
• School Operations: Worked on planning, presets, and collaboration features aimed at staff coordinating papers across subjects and rooms.
• Product Iteration: Shipped multiple generations of the product (Vue timer, Next.js App Router manager, and a later SaaS rewrite) as the scope grew.
• Data Model: Mapped the domain into a relational schema covering exams, timing options, and school-oriented entities.

Platform Demo

An early look at ExamTimer in a live classroom-style run:

Interface & Features

Product UI from the ExamManager / Online Exam Timer generations — dashboard, creation flow, student view, and pricing:

What I Learned

Building exam software for real school workflows taught me to keep timing states obvious under pressure, iterate the product shape as requirements grew, and leave a readable public trail when a product is retired — demos and screenshots that still show the craft without pretending the backends are live.