Sam Benson

Sam Benson

Synara
Building Synara - fixing ICS forever
27 points

About

I’m a developer working on Synara, a modern event and invite API designed to fix the inconsistencies of ICS and keep Google and Outlook in sync reliably. I built it after running into the same problems every time I tried to send calendar invites from an app. I care about clear developer tooling, simple interfaces, and solving practical problems that show up in real products. If you’ve ever had to deal with calendar logic, I’m always interested in hearing your horror stories and how you approached it.

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Maker History

  • SynaraThe developer-first event & invite API that fixes ICS issues
    Nov 2025
  • Keto & fasting GKI tracker
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    Jul 2025
  • 🎉
    Joined Product HuntSeptember 1st, 2017

Forums

Why Subscribed Calendars Stop Updating (And Why It Isn’t Your Fault)

Most developers who work with calendars eventually hit the same strange bug. Someone subscribes to your ICS feed. Everything looks fine. Then a day or two later nothing updates. Events go missing. Times drift. Outlook users swear the feed is frozen. Google polls whenever it feels like it. Apple refreshes until it doesn t.

You debug your code. You check the ICS. You regenerate the file. You wonder if you broke SEQUENCE again.

None of it fixes the problem.

Why Google Calendar Sometimes Ignores ICS Updates (and What Developers Can Do About It)

If you have ever sent calendar invites from your own backend, you have probably seen this problem:

  • You send an event update

  • The ICS file validates

  • Google Calendar imports it without errors

  • Nothing changes

No error. No warning. The update simply does not apply.

This is one of the most common issues developers face when working with ICS. The root cause is that Google interprets the specification differently from Outlook and Apple Calendar. The behaviour is not random. It is the result of several strict internal checks.

Sam Benson

2mo ago

Getting Synara ready for launch & solving the last hard problems before we ship

Hey everyone, here's a quick update on Synara, my API for delivering calendar invites that don t break across Google, Outlook, Apple, and ICS.

We re finally getting close to launch, and I wanted to share where things stand and what s left.

Where we're at

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