How HowdyCal Uses Google Calendar

HowdyCal is a voice-powered AI calendar assistant. You speak naturally about an event — "Coffee with Sarah tomorrow at 10am at Blue Bottle" — and HowdyCal uses AI to turn that into a fully structured calendar event, complete with the right time, location, and details. Here's exactly how we use your Google Calendar data to make that work.

The Scope We Request

When you connect your Google account, HowdyCal requests a single OAuth scope:

https://www.googleapis.com/auth/calendar

This scope allows HowdyCal to read and write to your Google Calendar. We need both read and write access to provide the full voice-to-calendar experience.

What We Do With Calendar Access

Here's specifically what HowdyCal uses your calendar access for:

Create events from your voice — When you speak an event description, our AI processes it and creates the event on your chosen Google Calendar with the correct title, time, duration, location, recurrence, and color.
Show your existing events — We display your day's events alongside the recording interface so you can see your schedule at a glance and avoid conflicts.
List your calendars — We fetch the list of calendars you have write access to so you can choose where new events should go.
Delete events — If you just created an event by voice and it's not right, you can delete it directly from HowdyCal.
Provide scheduling context to the AI — Your existing events help the AI make smarter decisions, like knowing you're free at a certain time or suggesting a duration that doesn't conflict with your next meeting.

What We Don't Do

We do not sell your calendar data or any personal information
We do not share your calendar data with third parties for advertising or marketing
We do not access other Google services beyond Calendar (no Gmail, Drive, Contacts, etc.)
We do not store your calendar events in our database — we read them from Google in real time when you use the app
We do not use your calendar data to build advertising profiles

How Your Data Is Protected

Your Google OAuth tokens are stored securely in encrypted, server-only app storage and are used only to access Google Calendar on your behalf
All data in transit is encrypted with HTTPS/TLS
Calendar data sent to our AI provider (Anthropic) for processing is used only to generate your event and is subject to Anthropic's data handling policies
Our use of Google data adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements

Revoking Access

You can disconnect your Google Calendar from HowdyCal at any time:

From within HowdyCal — Open Settings and tap "Disconnect Google Calendar". This revokes our access and deletes your stored tokens immediately.
From Google — Visit Google Account Permissions and remove HowdyCal from the list of connected apps.

After disconnecting, HowdyCal can no longer read or write to your calendar until you choose to reconnect.