Can Sunsama be vibe coded?

Build brief — a focused alternative to Sunsama

**Verdict:** Partly, if you narrow it · **Buildability:** 63/100 · **Category:** Tasks Calendar

**Source:** https://www.canitbevibecoded.com/sunsama

Independent editorial assessment from Can It Be Vibe Coded? Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or derived from Sunsama. Verify current pricing and capabilities before acting.

Context

**Sunsama** — Daily planner that pulls tasks and calendar into a focused schedule. It currently costs $25/mo.

A daily planning dashboard is not hard, but Sunsama's value is many integrations, careful UX, calendar sync, and habit-forming workflow.

This brief describes a focused, single-operator replacement for the part of Sunsama that is genuinely reproducible. It is deliberately narrower than the product it replaces, and it says so in writing. Build the useful core; do not pretend to have rebuilt the rest.

What you are building

Pull tasks/calendar events, let the user drag tasks into a day plan, track estimates/completion, and run a daily shutdown prompt.

Build a focused single-user workflow with real persistence, search, and export.

A responsive interface with real empty, loading, success, and error states.

Requirements

Functional

Hosted backend.

Auth.

Notification/email channel.

Data and integrations

Google/Microsoft calendar OAuth.

Task-tool APIs.

Each of these needs a real account, credential, or quota. Set them up before writing feature code.

Non-functional

Accessibility: semantic markup, labelled controls, visible focus, and reduced-motion support.

Security: server-side secrets, validated input, and no credentials in the client bundle.

Reliability: retries with backoff on external calls, and a clear failure state when a provider is down.

Portability: the operator can export their data and leave without losing it.

Implementation brief

Build me a solo daily planner like Sunsama. Requirements:

A local web app on localhost:4400: Node + Express + better-sqlite3, server-rendered

with a little vanilla JS for drag and drop. No frontend framework.

Today view, two columns: my Google Calendar events (read-only via googleapis, OAuth

creds in .env) as a timeline, and today's task list beside it.

Tasks have title, estimate in minutes, project tag, done flag. Quick-add box at the

top, plus a backlog panel of unplanned tasks I can drag into today.

Header shows planned minutes vs a daily budget from config (default 6h) and turns

red when I overplan.

A /shutdown page for the end of day: walks each unfinished task, one keystroke to

roll to tomorrow, send to backlog, or drop, then shows planned vs actual.

Keep per-day history in SQLite so a /week page can show the last 7 days of planned

vs done.

Calendar is read-only: never write events. Out of scope: task-tool integrations

(Todoist, Trello, email), mobile apps, and two-way calendar sync.

No accounts, no telemetry, everything local except the Google API calls.

README: Google Cloud console steps for the OAuth client · that console is the

worst part of this build.

Delivery standard

Inspect the repository first, then write a short implementation plan before writing code.

Deliver the smallest complete end-to-end workflow first; every primary control must work against persisted data.

Use real validation and storage; never substitute fake dashboards, decorative controls, hard-coded success states, or mock integrations.

Include responsive layouts plus genuine empty, loading, success, validation, and failure states.

Keep secrets server-side in environment variables, provide .env.example, and never commit credentials or user data.

Add structured logs around every external call and return actionable errors without leaking sensitive details.

Write unit tests for the core logic and one automated test of the main user journey.

Finish with a README covering setup, architecture, data location, backups, tests, deployment, and known limitations.

Acceptance criteria

A clean install starts the app using only the README and .env.example.

The primary journey works from first visit through saved result, reload, edit, export, and deletion where applicable.

Invalid input, missing configuration, provider failure, and an empty database each have a usable state.

The interface works at 390px and 1440px, is keyboard navigable, and shows visible focus on every control.

Tests, type checking, linting, and a production build all pass with no ignored failures.

No part of the interface implies a live integration, security guarantee, or scale capability that was not actually built and verified.

Non-goals

Do not build these, and do not claim to have replaced them:

Integration breadth.

Calendar two-way sync.

Daily ritual design.

Mobile apps.

Connectors, OAuth flows, and vendor API changes require constant upkeep.

The last 20 percent is sync, migration fidelity, speed, and edge cases.

What you still own after launch

Secure credentials, rotate secrets, and handle provider rate limits.

Run migrations, backups, restores, and dependency updates.

Test the critical journey after every model, API, or hosting change.

Monitor failures and fix the edge cases a first prompt will miss.

Maintain every third-party integration as APIs and OAuth rules change.

Risk

**Operational risk.** The code is achievable; dependable data, integrations, and ongoing operations are the real cost.

Editorial confidence in this assessment: high. No independent one-shot implementation is linked yet.

Prior art

Working open-source software you can read, fork, or borrow from before starting:

[Super Productivity](https://github.com/johannesjo/super-productivity) — Open-source task/time-planning app with local-first workflows

Generated by [Can It Be Vibe Coded?](https://www.canitbevibecoded.com) · Full report: https://www.canitbevibecoded.com/sunsama