Questions people actually ask
If yours is not here, ask it — the answer usually ends up on this page.
Does Zayeed need an internet connection?
No. Every shell holds a full local SQLite replica and does its own marking, so authoring, sitting, grading and reporting all work with the network unplugged. A server is only needed for sync between devices, LTI launches and join-by-code — and a grade earned offline is queued and delivered when the network returns.
Will the same answer get the same mark on a phone and on a laptop?
Yes, and structurally rather than by policy. Grading lives in one engine package that every shell uses; it is never re-implemented per platform. A generated conformance suite of 30,240 cases pins the behaviour so a change to the marker cannot quietly change grades.
Can it mark short answers, or only multiple choice?
Short answers are the point. Accepted answers are nested boolean expressions with synonym groups, declared part counts, ordering sensitivity and partial credit, and the whole tolerance pipeline sits behind a single leniency control. Every mark is shown with the reason it was awarded.
What does "formatting is markable" actually mean?
The question, the accepted answers and the candidate response are all marked text in one document model. So an author can require the subscripts in H₂SO₄ for a chemistry item, and ignore them for a prose item that happens to contain the same string. It is declared per item, and it never moves when the leniency slider does.
How does a candidate answer in a script the device cannot type?
The on-screen keyboard travels inside the exam pack. Keys emit strings rather than key codes, so one key can produce a combining mark or a whole cluster; levels are named; direction is a property of the layout. Latin, maths and chemistry, IPA and Bangla are built in.
How do extra time and rest breaks work?
Extra time is granted as a share of the paper and applied by returning a longer session configuration, so the timer, expiry, cross-device resume and the replayed event log all honour it. Rest breaks stop the clock and are derived from the pause events already in the log. Both are granted on the account and sync to every device.
Can I host it myself?
Yes. The server runs on Node against SQLite by default or your own Postgres. Both are generated from one schema definition with a parity test, so self-hosting is the same product rather than a reduced edition. Air-gapped deployment is supported and the shells never require an outbound connection to us.
Does it plug into Moodle, Canvas or Blackboard?
It is an LTI 1.3 tool: Deep Linking to place the activity and pick a quiz, launch to sign the student straight in, and Assignment and Grade Services to return the mark. QTI 3.0 import and export handle moving item banks in and out.
What happens to my questions if I stop paying?
They export as a .mcq pack or as QTI 3.0, with media, rules and question sets included. The bridge between pack and database is lossless in both directions, which is the only version of data portability that means anything.
Can I bring the question bank I already have?
Spreadsheets and CSV, Moodle XML, GIFT, Aiken, QTI, .mcq and .mcqx files, legacy MCQPro Access banks, and questions pasted into a box. Files are recognised by their bytes rather than their extension, and every import shows you what it would add, update and leave alone before a single row is written. Anything a reader could not use is reported with the place it came from — bank.csv row 4 — instead of being dropped. Re-importing a corrected export updates the questions you already have rather than making a second bank.
How do I get work onto another machine when there is no network?
Two machines on the same local network sync directly, with no server involved: a first pairing shows six digits on both screens, and if they differ the screen tells you to stop. With no network at all, write a .mcq bundle and carry it. A bundle holds the changes the other device has not seen rather than a snapshot, so it merges into whatever that machine has done since, and applying it twice does nothing the second time. All three routes — account, local network, carried file — end in the same rows.
Can I run a live poll with no internet, on our own network?
Yes. The live server runs on the laptop at the front of the room with one command — the same program the hosted site runs, not a cut-down version. Phones join over the local network, nothing crosses the router, and rooms are held in memory rather than written to a file. For a question about pay or a union vote that is the right answer: there is no third party who could be asked for the data later, because there is no data anywhere else. A room lasts as long as the relay does, so restarting it ends every room in progress.
Can the projector be made to show who voted for what?
No, and not because of a setting somebody could switch off. The tally type has nowhere to put a participant identifier, so no server change and no interface bug can put a name on a wall. Closing a question and revealing its results are separate host actions too — if the bars appeared the instant answering stopped, the last person to vote would watch their own answer move the chart, which in a small room identifies them.
Can questions have audio or video, and what if a machine cannot play them?
Yes — images, audio, video and WebVTT captions, carried inside the pack. A sitting that needs a format the machine cannot decode is refused before it starts, with the format and the reason named, because a recording that fails to play fails silently and a candidate cannot tell a broken clip from a clip of silence. A live room is warned and runs instead. Sound is Opus and film is VP9, both in WebM, chosen because they are royalty-free and therefore actually present on the Linux desktops that will not decode H.264 or AAC. Every shell can run the check itself, before exam day.
Does it lock the machine down during an exam?
Three levels, and each one prints what it cannot do. Focused fills the screen, keeps the paper in front and records time away from it — that removes accidents, not intent. Supervised also asks the system to keep the paper out of screenshots, report a second display and empty the clipboard — that raises the cost of cheating and does not defeat a candidate who administers the machine. A Linux desktop on Wayland is not permitted to suppress screenshots at all, so Supervised there is Focused plus display detection and the app says so rather than downgrading quietly. Nothing in software sees a phone under the desk, and a camera pointed at the screen defeats every screenshot restriction on every platform.
How do I prove an attempt was not altered afterwards?
Every event in an attempt is hashed into a chain over canonical bytes, so one edited answer, one deleted pause or one reordered pair moves the head and is visible. At submission the head is signed with Ed25519, and the seal verifies offline from a public key alone — no server, no account and no permission from us. An attempt with no seal is reported as unsealed rather than as tampered, because those are different findings and only one of them is about a person, and the integrity report is written to state what the log shows without accusing anybody.
Can an exam paper be opened before the exam?
Not if it is sealed to a sitting. The paper is encrypted to a key whose secret half stays with the invigilator, so it can be distributed a week early and still cannot be read until the window opens, and there is no passphrase fallback on a sealed paper. An early release — a fire drill, a timetable change — needs a name and a reason, and every request, granted or refused, is recorded so an appeal has something to read.
Can a lapsed licence change a candidate’s mark?
No, and that is enforced by the build rather than promised in a policy: a test fails if the grading engine ever depends on the licence package. A licence can decide whether a screen opens. It can never affect a grade. Licences are also checked on the device from a public key alone, with a grace period, so a school whose card expired over the holidays is not locked out in the middle of an exam.
Is this the old Zayeed?
It shares a name and nothing else. The engine, data model, formats, security posture and all four interfaces are designed from scratch. Among the things that did not come forward: an action set that could spawn processes from data inside an exam file, an encryption password identical in every copy ever shipped, and a back office that stored customers’ card numbers.
Still deciding?
The fastest way to judge a marker is to try to break it. Run a paper, answer it badly on purpose, and read the reason next to every mark.