Enhancing MeetingBar's Calendar Integration: My First Pull Request

As a technical professional who doesn’t code, I work around limitations in software by finding alternative solutions that involved using other software or scripting. So when I encountered a limitation with MeetingBar, a menu bar app for managing calendar events, and my typical pattern of finding alternative solutions didn’t work, I pointed my Windsurf IDE at the MeetingBar repository and started working on a solution.

I wanted the Internet Account and Calendar names available in the AppleScript automations available on the advanced tab:

I wanted this function provided by MeetingBar to contain calendarName and calendarSource:

on meetingStart (eventId, title, allday, startDate, endDate, eventLocation, repeatingEvent, attendeeCount, meetingUrl, meetingService, meetingNotes, calendarName, calendarSource)

end meetingStart

A few hours later, I had enhanced MeetingBar’s AppleScript interface with the two new parameters - calendarName and calendarSource and had it working in a new virtual environment. Here is a screenshot of the new Edit Script screen:

The next morning, I submitted Issue #805 describing the need for calendar source information and a corresponding Pull Request #806 implementing the solution. And while waiting for my pull request to be merged, I’m using my enhanced version of MeetingBar with the new calendar information feature in production locally!

I never thought I’d be contributing to open source projects. Thanks to AI tools like Cascade in the Windsurf IDE, I was able to make meaningful contributions to MeetingBar, a popular macOS calendar enhancement app, that adds real functionality.

The new calendar integration feature enables powerful automation scenarios. Now you can write AppleScripts that handle events differently based on their source - for example, automatically creating Drafts notes for work calendar events but not personal ones, or using different notification styles for events from different calendars. It’s a small change that opens up many possibilities for customization.

I’m happy to report that MeetingBar v4.11.2, which includes my contributed calendar source integration, is now available in the Mac App Store. This update brings enhanced calendar automation capabilities to the broader MeetingBar community.

Check out the App Store listing highlighting the new feature: