A Concept Paper for Universal Availability Infrastructure
MyTime proposes a public, searchable availability directory where anyone can discover available resources by time, location, and category --- without knowing who to ask. Current systems are person-centric ("When is John available?"). MyTime inverts this to time-centric discovery ("Who is free at 3pm Tuesday?").
The system uses a minimal three-state model:
| State | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Free | Available for booking or allocation |
| Busy | Unavailable, confirmed |
| Tentative | Provisionally booked or lower priority |
Nothing more is stored. No appointment details, no customer data, no transaction history. Privacy is architectural, not policy-dependent.
Availability data is trapped in proprietary booking platforms (10--30% commissions, vertical lock-in) or private calendar silos. Driving instructors sit idle between lessons. Wedding venues stand empty on dates couples would have booked. The information exists --- it is invisible.
Calendar interoperability standards (iCalendar, CalDAV, VFREEBUSY) handle availability exchange between known parties. What they do not provide is a way for strangers to search for available resources across providers, categories, and geographies.
- Infrastructure, not a marketplace --- No transaction intermediation, no commissions, no platform lock-in
- Built on existing standards --- Extends iCalendar (RFC 5545), CalDAV (RFC 4791), and VAVAILABILITY (RFC 7953) with a discovery layer
- Privacy by architecture --- Three-state model stores no sensitive information by design
- Variable granularity --- From 10-minute blocks for freelancers to 180-day blocks for venues
This is a concept paper (v2.0), not a specification. It describes design principles, surveys prior art, proposes a bootstrapping strategy (the embeddable availability widget), and enumerates open design questions. A technical specification would be a separate deliverable if the concept attracts contributors.
See MyTime_WhitePaper_v2.0.pdf for the full concept paper.
We seek people who will challenge the assumptions, not validate them:
- Calendar protocol engineers --- Can VAVAILABILITY and CalDAV Scheduling already solve this?
- Distributed systems architects --- Is the storage and query model viable at scale?
- Economists --- Can a zero-commission infrastructure layer sustain itself?
- Privacy engineers --- How should GDPR-compliant calendar ingestion work?
- Cold-start problem --- How to achieve provider density before the search index is useful
- Architecture --- Centralised service, federated network, or crawl-based index?
- Governance --- What structure prevents capture by a single commercial entity?
- Economic model --- Freemium widget features? Commercial API access? Institutional sponsorship?
MIT License --- see LICENSE for details.
Aaron Garcia aaron@garcia.ltd