# How to Vibe Code Your Own Sunsama (and Stop Paying for It)

> Make work-life balance a reality

- Site: https://sunsama.com
- Category: Productivity & Time Management
- Platforms: Web app, macOS app, Windows app, Linux app, iOS app, Android app
- Verdict: **Serious undertaking** (38/100 vibecodeable)
- Estimated effort: 3-5 months of serious part-time development

## Verdict

Build a subset for personal use rather than paying, but brace yourself for massive ongoing API maintenance overhead.

Replicating Sunsama's core aesthetic and daily planning ritual on a single web stack is entirely feasible for a solo builder in a few weeks. However, the true value of Sunsama lies in its deep, bi-directional integrations with 20+ external work tools. Maintaining OAuth tokens, handling rate limits, managing schema updates from Jira, Linear, Slack, and Google Calendar, and resolving sync conflicts without breaking will consume hundreds of hours of unglamorous engineering time.

### What you can't replicate

- Enterprise IT security approvals and SOC 2 audit readiness
- The exact historical integrations ecosystem maintained across shifting corporate API endpoints without dedicated engineering staff
- The organic word-of-mouth community and brand trust established over a decade

## What it does

The digital daily planner, task manager, and calendar aggregation tool for modern professionals to eliminate distractions and prevent burnout.

### Core features

- Guided morning planning ritual (workload selection, backlog import)
- Bi-directional calendar integration (Google, Outlook, Apple)
- Task and project aggregation (Jira, Linear, GitHub, Notion, Trello, Asana)
- Email and message action conversion (Gmail, Slack)
- Daily timeboxing calendar view with drag-and-drop scheduling
- Focus mode with Pomodoro timers and distraction muting
- Evening shutdown ritual with progress summary and time audit
- AI assistant for time estimation and backlog categorization

## The business

### Pricing

- Pro Plan (Monthly): $22/mo — Full access to all integrations, calendar sync, and AI features.
- Pro Plan (Annual): $17/mo — Billed annually at $204/year.
- Enterprise: Custom — For enterprises requiring custom security, compliance, and SSO.

### Funding

$500K raised.
- Seed Round ($500K, Feb 2019)
Investors: Y Combinator

Founded 2013.
Team size: ~10 employees.

## The hard parts

- Maintaining stable bi-directional OAuth sync and API adapters across 20+ external vendors with frequent rate limits and schema changes
- Building a performant, multi-calendar drag-and-drop timeboxing rendering engine with complex date-math
- Reliable cross-device state synchronization and optimistic UI updates across web and desktop wrappers after sleep/wake cycles
- Enterprise compliance infrastructure including SOC 2 and SAML/SSO authentication flows

## How to vibe code Sunsama

### Prerequisites

- Node.js (free): Runtime environment for the TypeScript full-stack application.
- GitHub (free): Source code repository and CI/CD deployment pipelines.
- Google Developer Console (free): Required to set up OAuth credentials for Google Calendar and Gmail sync.

### Recommended AI tools

- Claude Code: Best-in-class multi-file agentic coding tool for scaffolding complex API routers and UI components.
- Cursor: Ideal for fine-tuning complex drag-and-drop calendar timeboxing views and React state transitions.

### Stack

- Frontend: Next.js with Tailwind CSS and shadcn/ui
- Backend: Next.js Server Actions and API Routes
- Database: Turso (Edge SQLite)
- Auth: better-auth
- Payments: Stripe
- Other: Vercel AI SDK, Anthropic API, PostHog

### Hosting

- Cloudflare (Hosting the Next.js frontend and edge API routes): $0-5/mo
- Turso (Serverless SQLite database for tasks, calendar events, and ritual logs): $0/mo

### Build guide

1. **Project Scaffolding & Database Schema** — Initialize the Next.js application with Tailwind CSS, configure better-auth with SQLite via Turso, and establish core database models for users, tasks, daily plans, and timebox blocks.

```
Scaffold a new Next.js TypeScript project with Tailwind CSS and App Router. Set up better-auth for secure email/password authentication backed by a Turso SQLite database using `@libsql/client`. Create Drizzle ORM schema files for `users`, `tasks` (fields: id, userId, title, status, estimatedMinutes, source, externalId, date), `timebox_blocks` (fields: id, userId, taskId, startTime, endTime, date), and `daily_rituals` (fields: id, userId, date, mood, note, completedAt). Implement migration scripts and verify connection stability against a local or remote Turso instance.
```

2. **Core Daily Planning & Ritual Workflow** — Build the guided morning planning ritual interface where users set a daily intention, select a target workload limit, and pull uncompleted tasks into today's focus list.

```
Build a multi-step guided morning ritual wizard component in React using shadcn/ui. Step 1 prompts the user to rate their energy and set a max working hours cap. Step 2 lists backlogged tasks with estimated durations, allowing the user to drag or click items into today's active plan. Step 3 calculates cumulative planned hours against the user's daily cap with visual warnings if overcommitted. Persist ritual state and active daily task selections to the `daily_rituals` and `tasks` tables via Server Actions.
```

3. **Calendar Integration & Timeboxing UI** — Implement Google Calendar API OAuth sync and render a performant day-view calendar grid allowing users to drag and drop tasks into specific time slots.

```
Implement Google Calendar OAuth integration using better-auth or custom endpoints to fetch events for the authenticated user's primary calendar. Build a custom day-view calendar grid component in React displaying events as locked blocks alongside an adjacent task drawer. Add drag-and-drop or click-to-timebox functionality allowing users to bind task IDs to specific start and end times (`startTime`, `endTime`) on their daily schedule. Handle date-math edge cases, timezone offsets, and overlapping event layout rendering cleanly.
```

4. **External Task Tool Connectors (Jira & Linear)** — Create background sync routines and OAuth integrations to pull issues from Jira and Linear into the unified task backlog.

```
Create OAuth connection settings pages and API webhook handlers for Jira and Linear. Write server-side sync services using fetch to poll or ingest user assigned issues into the unified `tasks` table, mapping external states to local task statuses. Implement manual refresh buttons with loading indicators, error handling for expired tokens, and rate-limit backoff logic. Ensure external task IDs prevent duplicate imports.
```

5. **Focus Mode & Pomodoro Timer** — Build an immersive focus execution mode featuring an interactive Pomodoro countdown timer, active task tracking, and distraction muting toggles.

```
Build a dedicated 'Focus Mode' full-screen view in Next.js. Display the currently active task in large typography alongside a functional Pomodoro timer (25/5 minute intervals) with audio chime triggers using browser Web Audio API. Include a distraction muting panel with toggles for ambient soundscapes and desktop notification reminders. Track active focus duration per task and update time-spent metrics in the database upon session completion.
```

6. **Evening Shutdown Ritual & Analytics** — Implement the evening shutdown ritual summarizing completed wins, tracking where time actually went, and helping users log off without guilt.

```
Build the evening shutdown ritual flow comprising three sequential screens: 1) Review completed tasks and celebrate daily wins; 2) Inspect a time-audit breakdown comparing planned time vs. calendar meeting/task execution time; 3) A calming closing screen that clears uncompleted overflow tasks to tomorrow's backlog and logs shutdown status. Implement summary analytics charts visualizing weekly time distribution across categories using Recharts.
```

### Cost vs paying

**Starting costs (one-time):**

- Custom Domain: $12/yr
- AI Coding Assistant (Claude Pro / Cursor): $20/mo
- Total: ~$32 initial

**Ongoing costs (monthly):**

- Cloudflare Pages & Workers: $0-5/mo
- Turso Database: $0/mo
- Anthropic API (AI Time Estimation): ~$3/mo
- Total: ~$3-8/mo

- Paying for the SaaS instead: $22/mo
- Build time: 60-80 hours
- AI tool credits: $20/mo (Claude Pro / Cursor)
- Break-even: Not a commercial product (personal clone; pays off immediately in subscription savings if replacing paid Sunsama subscription)

## Sources

- [Sunsama Homepage & Feature Manifestos](https://sunsama.com)
- [Sunsama Pricing Page](https://sunsama.com/pricing)
- [Tracan Company Profile: Sunsama](https://vertexaisearch.cloud.google.com/grounding-api-redirect/AUZIYQE73Ip__yb5u5Vn7iE2EkhwRfhwgPJnmtigwGf_NR9AIP01rl0DQrK8-3brF80rU7-P8RTn8z3sMRMfVlBZTIbjSrinvtrsUCDQDrSl16CrZdWtnnh9T63c00hYR4Wf66VZU0A16xqYDPhD8VOUb_BxA2QTIO0Jxxl9Koou_CpYT62zTOvGNRpGNJM=)
- [GetLatka Revenue Data: Sunsama](https://vertexaisearch.cloud.google.com/grounding-api-redirect/AUZIYQGWe_XVBfG-pQ4mZ1ojly9mQ9r8PrvBnr9Jhv9duIMh8aGDyy8quNt64BOEa55M5HeiZpNamC-xpDRZtHofifZp3Osmox44rhdn4Tyzhlp6KkXj-nZKxkl-kuuA2w==)