Calendarr already publishes an event snapshot into its App Group container for the widgets to render. That channel is what a second Mac app needs too, so this turns an internal detail into a documented contract rather than something a second app reverse-engineers and then drifts from. Foundation only — no SwiftUI, no UIKit, no AppKit — so one source compiles for iOS, Mac Catalyst and native macOS. Building against the native macOS SDK is the point: it fails loudly on a UIKit leak that a Catalyst build would accept. Three things earn their place here rather than being copied per app: CalendarrAppGroup resolves the container identifier per platform. macOS requires the Team ID prefix and iOS forbids it, and a mismatch fails silently — nil container, every read and write a no-op, widgets blank forever. CalendarKey normalises the two ways the server reports calendar_id (bare for CalDAV, "local-3" style for everything else). Normalising them differently is what made per-calendar filtering quietly do nothing for some sources. The snapshot schema is versioned, with the coverage window now explicit. That window is the easiest thing to get wrong downstream: outside it the snapshot carries no information, which is not the same as no events, and rendering an empty week for an uncovered date produces a screen that looks right and is false. covers() exists so consumers can tell the two apart. Reads return a named result rather than an optional. "Never ran", "signed out", "too new to read" and "unreadable" need different messages, and a bare nil is how the App Group misconfiguration used to hide. Writing is behind @_spi(Writer) so a read-only consumer cannot corrupt the shared cache. Writes post a Darwin notification, the one cross-process signal that works between two sandboxed apps without an extra entitlement. The six colour values stay flat on the wire instead of nesting under `theme`, which would read better. A v1 reader requires them flat, so nesting would have broken every older build on the first v2 write; `theme` is a computed view. Tests pin both directions of compatibility, since the two apps ship independently. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
CalendarrKit
Shared code between Calendarr (iOS / Mac Catalyst) and other apps from the same developer team that want to read the user's calendar.
CalendarrCore depends on Foundation only — no SwiftUI, no UIKit, no AppKit — so
it compiles for iOS, Mac Catalyst and native macOS from one source. That
constraint is load-bearing: swift build against the native macOS SDK is what
catches a UIKit import before it reaches a consumer, because a Mac Catalyst build
would compile it happily.
What a reading app gets
import CalendarrCore
let store = SnapshotStore() // uses CalendarrAppGroup.current
switch store.read() {
case .ok(let snap):
snap.events // [SnapshotEvent]
snap.theme // the colours Calendarr is currently rendering with
snap.writtenAt // "as of 14:32"
snap.coverageStart // see "Coverage" below
snap.coverageEnd
case .neverWritten: // Calendarr has never run here → "open Calendarr once"
case .loggedOut: // signed out → "sign in to Calendarr", discard old events
case .incompatible: // Calendarr is newer than this package → "update the app"
case .unreadable(let why): // almost always a wrong App Group; log `why`
}
store.readCalendars() // [SnapshotCalendar] for a filter UI
React to changes without polling:
let token = SnapshotChangeNotifier.observe { /* hop to your actor, read again */ }
// keep `token` alive; releasing it removes the observer
Also reload on window activation — the notification is a best-effort signal, and missing one should leave you slightly stale, never wrong.
Coverage — the part that bites
The snapshot is not the whole calendar. Outside coverageStart..<coverageEnd it
carries no information, which is not the same as "no events". Rendering an
empty March because it is outside the window produces a screen that looks correct
and is false. Use snapshot.covers(date) and grey out what you cannot speak for.
| Window | ~7 days back, ~42 days ahead, frozen at write time |
| Cap | 500 events, sorted by start |
| Filters | hidden and "banished" calendars are already excluded — you see the user's filtered view |
| Scope | personal only; group overlays are never published, deliberately |
| Dropped | notes, url, source, creator, privacy, read-only, reminders, recurrence |
What remains is enough to display a calendar and deliberately not enough to edit one or reason about permissions.
Setup for a consuming app
Same developer team (PP34X97WS3) is required — that is what makes the container
and the keychain group shared.
<key>com.apple.security.app-sandbox</key><true/>
<key>com.apple.security.application-groups</key>
<array><string>PP34X97WS3.group.com.scarriffleservices.calendarr</string></array>
The Team ID prefix is mandatory on macOS and forbidden on iOS. CalendarrAppGroup.current
resolves the right one; it must match the entitlement byte for byte, or
containerURL(…) returns nil and every read silently yields nothing.
Never sign in from a consuming app. Credentials, 2FA and token storage belong to Calendarr alone.
Wire format rules
widget-cache.json, widget-calendars.json and session.json live in the group
container and are read by apps that ship on independent schedules.
- Filenames do not change within a major version, so an older build keeps reading after the writer updates.
- Readers refuse
schemaVersion > maxSupportedSchemainstead of guessing. - Writers only ever add optional fields. Never rename, remove or retype one.
- A breaking change means a new major version and a new filename, with the old file still written for one full release cycle.
- The package version is the contract:
CalendarrKit 1.x⇔ snapshot schema 2. Depend on.upToNextMajor(from: "1.0.0").
Rule 3 is why the six colour values sit flat at the top level instead of nested
under theme, which would read better: a v1 reader requires them flat, so nesting
would have broken every older build on the first v2 write. theme is a computed
view over them. SnapshotSchemaTests pins this down in both directions.
Verify
DEVELOPER_DIR=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer swift build # native macOS — catches UIKit leaks
DEVELOPER_DIR=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer swift test