Important stuff gets buried
A course group gets hundreds of messages before a quiz or OPPE. The one message with the deadline or the notes link scrolls away and nobody can find it again.
For IITM BS students · by an IITM BS student
The campus our online degree doesn't have.
Over 30,000 of us study for the IIT Madras BS degree from cities and towns all over India, and we almost never meet. Quad is a community app only for verified students. Join course communities, OPPE and end-term prep circles, hackathon teams, fest crews and city meetups. Each one has Reddit-style posts and votes, a real-time group chat, file sharing and direct messages. When a group gets busy, Catch me up uses AI to tell you what you missed in seconds.
Judges and visitors: “Try the live demo” logs you into a shared demo account with sample communities, no sign-up needed. Quad is an unofficial student project and is not affiliated with IIT Madras.
–students joined
–communities created
–posts
–chat messages
–files shared
–AI catch-ups
Why not just WhatsApp?
Anyone with the link can join
Group links get forwarded everywhere, so spammers and "paid help" sellers get in. On Quad, every account is a verified IITM BS student.
No campus, so no way to find your people
In an online degree, nobody bumps into a study partner in the corridor. Quad lets you find students taking your course, at your level, in your city.
What you can do on Quad
Verified students only
Sign in with your IITM student Google account. Your batch is read from your roll number, so nobody can fake it.
Reddit-style communities
Posts with titles, upvotes and threaded replies, sorted by Hot, New or Top. The good stuff rises and stays visible.
Live group chat in every community
A real-time chat docked next to the posts, for quick questions. Share PDFs, images and notes up to 15 MB.
Direct messages
Message any verified student, like a senior, a teammate or a classmate, without sharing your phone number.
Catch me up
Missed 200 messages? In one click, AI on Amazon Bedrock lists the highlights, deadlines, unanswered questions and files you need.
Find teammates
Describe what you need, like "a UI person for a hackathon" or "a study partner in Pune", and AI suggests members whose skills fit.
Built on AWS, serverless from end to end
- Amazon CloudFront + S3 serve this site from edge locations close to students.
- Amazon Cognito handles sign-in with Google, and a Lambda trigger blocks any account that isn't an IITM BS student address.
- Amazon API Gateway runs an HTTP API for the app and a WebSocket API for live chat, posts and notifications.
- AWS Lambda (Python) runs all the app logic, with no servers to manage.
- Amazon DynamoDB stores profiles, communities, posts, votes, comments and messages in a single table.
- Amazon S3 stores shared files. Browsers upload directly using short-lived presigned links.
- Amazon Bedrock (Nova 2 Lite) powers Catch me up and Find teammates.
- AWS CDK defines all of this as code. It was built with Claude Code, a coding agent connected to the AWS account.