Label unavailable or stale free/busy data instead of showing open slots
A free/busy request times out and the connector treats an empty response as an empty calendar. Distinguish confirmed free time from unknown availability.
- Focused work estimate
- 1h 30m + prerequisites
- Priority in the scenario
- High
- Engineering practice
- Failure semantics · Caching · User feedback
Estimated field mix
- Integrations80%
- API design20%
Field percentages are editorial estimates of the ticket's engineering focus. They total 100%; they are not measured time, proficiency scores, or ownership evidence.
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Project context
A fictional consultancy books appointments across time zones. The first connector duplicates events after timeouts and offers slots during stale calendar sync. Use a local calendar-provider double and synthetic calendars.
Setup prerequisites
- Create a local provider double for free/busy, event creation, updates, cancellation, and expiring tokens.
- Use synthetic calendars and an injected clock; no calendar account or outgoing invitation is required.
Preceding work
Complete these dependencies, or supply their agreed outputs before taking this ticket.
Acceptance criteria
- Availability responses include fetched-at time, freshness state, and provider outcome.
- A timeout, malformed response, or expired cache produces unknown availability and no bookable slots.
- Fresh empty busy data can produce slots and remains distinguishable from failure.
Implementation constraints
- Use a configurable freshness limit and injected clock.
Verification to include
- Return fresh empty data and verify valid working-hour slots.
- Return timeout and separately age cached data beyond the limit; neither may expose bookable slots.
Deliverables
- Availability state model and stale-data tests
Rollout and recovery
Enable fail-closed availability before adding booking creation; users receive a retry state while provider data is unknown.
Value of the work
For the engineer: Practice time modeling, conflict-safe booking, external state reconciliation, and credential lifecycle boundaries.
For the team: Review whether integration work protects appointment correctness and offers clear recovery when a provider is uncertain.
Evidence boundaries
Outcome Evidence: Tests, patches, and runbooks are requested deliverables. They become Outcome Evidence only through a qualified Mission and immutable Evidence IDs.
Ownership Evidence: Independent adaptation must be observed under a declared verification policy and cite immutable Evidence IDs. Completing a planning ticket establishes no Ownership Evidence.