Making sure of Sync

Or wondering why wouldn't there already be a hundred and one other products doing similarly

When you land on an idea and you genuinely believe it's not out there—at least not in the exact shape you're thinking—it’s exciting. Even if the idea isn’t wild or revolutionary, the fact that you haven’t seen it done keeps it feeling fresh. That’s where I was with Sync.

Sync wasn’t meant to be some magical thing. Just a way to protect time availability. If someone books you outside of Cal.com—let’s say via email, Teams, or even direct calendar invite—you shouldn't have to manually go into your booking tool to close that slot. Sync would detect that booking, and either close the slot automatically or ask you before doing so. That’s it.

The idea felt too obvious

It felt so simple, so commonplace, that I honestly couldn't believe no one had built it. If Cal.com already did this, I would have seen it. I’ve used Cal enough to know it doesn’t reflect external bookings unless I manually adjust things. And that’s the problem.

People book meetings in many ways. Sometimes they send you invites that go to Apple Calendar. Sometimes it's Google Calendar, sometimes Outlook. Your Cal.com page, though, doesn’t know unless you go back and update it.

That’s where Sync would fit—a layer that reads your calendar in real-time and keeps your booking tools in sync.

I went to check

Given how mature calendar integrations are now, I figured there had to be something close out there. And with tools like ChatGPT, it's easier than ever to ask the web the right way.

So I did. I asked:
Are you sure there’s nothing like this out there? Can you search the web for me?

The results included:

• Reclaim.ai

• CalendarBridge

• Motion

• Clockwise

• Morgen

• SyncThemCalendars

Tools like Reclaim seem solid. They do two-way sync, block off time across calendars, and help manage work/life scheduling. Some aim at productivity and prioritization. Others at team coordination.

But not quite this

Still, none of them seemed to fully address what Sync tries to do in its narrow way:

• Detect external bookings in real-time

• Offer either an auto-close or user prompt

• Update booking tools like Cal.com accordingly

• Focus on solo professionals managing their own time inventory

It’s not a new category. But it does feel like a gap.

So what now?

Maybe this isn’t worth building. Maybe the answer is: go integrate Reclaim.ai or one of the others and move on.

But I still wonder—if Sync, done well, could be useful in its own right.
Even as a small plug-in.
Even if just to let you say—“this slot is taken—don’t book me again”—without having to think about it….

I’ll leave it there for now.