A lot of bookings on Book A Sloth are online -- a coaching call, a consultation, a therapy session over video. And for those, a confirmed booking isn't really finished until both people have the one thing they actually need: a link to click at the right time. So today's job was Google Calendar integration -- when someone books an online session, the system automatically creates a calendar event with a Google Meet link and puts it in front of both people. No "I'll send you the link later." No manual step. It just exists.
Simple promise. The kind that hides a swamp.
The first swamp is the one every developer wades through when they touch Google: OAuth. To create events on a host's calendar, my app needs the host's permission, and Google guards that permission with an elaborate handshake -- scopes (exactly what am I allowed to do?), the consent screen (the host clicking "yes, allow this"), and refresh tokens (so I can keep doing it without asking every single time). None of it is hard exactly, but all of it is fiddly, and every piece has to be precisely right or the whole thing quietly refuses to work. I spent a good chunk of the day just getting the handshake to complete cleanly -- getting a host to connect their Google account and have my app actually hold onto that permission properly.
Got there. The connection worked. I triggered a test booking, and -- an event appeared on the calendar. Victory, right?
Except: no Meet link. The event was there, correct date, correct time, correct people. But the little "Join with Google Meet" button, the entire point of the exercise, was missing. Just... not there. An online session with no way to get online.
And this is one of those bugs that's maddening precisely because it's so close to working. A total failure you can grab by the collar. This wasn't that. This was 95% right, which is worse, because it means the mistake is small and hiding, and small hiding mistakes are the ones that eat your afternoon. The event created fine. Everything created fine. It just wouldn't attach the one thing I needed.
The fix, when I finally found it, was almost insultingly small -- the specific flag in the request that tells Google "and also generate a Meet conference for this event." Creating a calendar event and creating a video-meeting-enabled calendar event are not the same request, and I'd been making the first one while expecting the second. One missing instruction. Hours to find, seconds to fix. The exact ratio these things always seem to run.
Once that clicked, it clicked completely. Book an online session → event on both calendars → Meet link attached → everyone has exactly what they need, automatically, without a human doing anything. Watching that whole chain fire correctly for the first time was genuinely satisfying after a day of fighting a missing button.
One product decision I made along the way, and I think it's the right one: calendar sync is optional, not required. A host doesn't have to connect Google to use Book A Sloth. Some will, some won't, some don't even want to. If I forced a Google connection into the onboarding, I'd add a whole scary permission step right when a new host is deciding whether this product is worth their time -- and I'd lose people at exactly the wrong moment. So it's a power-up you opt into when you're ready, not a toll you pay at the door. Reduce friction at the start; offer depth later.
A small but real win to end a fiddly day. Nothing philosophical, nothing dramatic -- just a stubborn integration that finally behaved, and a feature that quietly makes online bookings feel finished instead of half-done.
I needed the small win, honestly. Because the next day, the weight of a month of this catches up with me all at once, and I write the tiredest, most honest post of the whole series.
Explore more from Shubham — discover curated reads at BookASloth, or check out Rajmudra Media for media & marketing solutions.
Explore more from Shubham — discover curated reads at Book AS loth, or check out Rajmudra Media for media & marketing solutions.