Compass Calendar

Inspiration

After getting overwhelmed by a bunch of productivity systems/apps, I decided that getting things done as an developer should be simple. I decided to create my own task manager & calendar that helped me stay on top of things without all the complexity.

What it does

It's a minimal planner that puts tasks + events in one place. It helps you plan Month → Week → Day → Now

How I built it

I started with the backend API that supports basic CRUD operations. Then I added the Google Calendar sync. Finally, I wrote the frontend from scratch using React.

Challenges I ran into

The Google Calendar API is quite primitive, so it took a lot of work to get the 2-way-sync stable.

There were some other gnarly foundational engineering work: OAuth/sessions, drag-and-drop, recurring events

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Tailoring the experience for developers. We're making speed, shorts, and simplicity a key part of the app, so that it feels as nice as typing in your IDE. We also open-sourced all the code under MIT.

What I learned

Simple > everything. This applies to both the product and how we work as developers. The more complexity, the harder it is to ship.

What's next for Compass Calendar

Getting profitable, then expanding our features and teams to help developers even more.

Built With

• css
• express.js
• gcp
• google
• google-cloud
• jest
• mongodb
• ngrok
• node.js
• react
• redux
• socket.io
• styled-components
• tailwind
• testing-library
• typescript
• webpack
• yarn