Reading a calendar without writing back to it

"Overload" is the most popular vague feeling in productivity software. Most apps detect it by counting tasks and waving their hands. We wanted to count something real.

So Mini Me OS reads your calendar.

What we read, and how

You paste a private iCal URL in Settings → Calendar. Google Calendar, Apple iCloud and Microsoft Outlook all expose one — instructions are inline on the Settings page so you do not have to dig. The server fetches the URL, parses the next 7 days of events, and stores them in a small table next to your workspace data. The cache refreshes when you press Sync, when Today notices the cache is older than 15 minutes, or whenever you open the app fresh.

That is it. No OAuth. No write scope. No quiet background calls to Google. The URL is treated as a secret because it grants read access to the source calendar — but that secret never leaves our server.

What we do with it

The engine adds a function called `getTodayFreeMinutes`. It clips the work-day window from your rule settings (default 09:00 to 20:00), subtracts the minutes that overlap with non-all-day events, and returns the number of minutes still free.

When the total minutes of tasks planned today exceeds free time by more than 15 minutes, Today's primary card flips to a calendar-aware overload message:

> You planned 5h of tasks but only have 2h free today. Mini Me recommends a simpler plan.

The reason line names the two biggest events of the day. The button still says Simplify my day, but the warning now comes with hard numbers.

What we will not do

We will not write back. The product has no scope to create, edit, or delete events in your calendar. The Settings copy says so. The Privacy Policy says so. The code has no path to do it. If we ever need write access to deliver something useful, it will be a new permission with its own clear opt-in — not a quiet expansion of the current one.

We will also not store more than 7 days. Long-window event caches are convenient for the developer and creepy for the user.

A side benefit

When you disconnect — Settings → Calendar → Disconnect — the URL and every cached event for your workspace are deleted in the same database transaction. The product reverts to its calendar-blind state. The engine still works; it just stops claiming to know your free time.

We think that is the right shape. You should be able to leave the integration as easily as you joined it.