Velprium – Google Calendar as a Time Database

TL;DR

TL;DR: Velprium layers a structured database on top of Google Calendar — letting you tag events with custom properties, filter across arbitrary dimensions, and review time patterns that a plain calendar hides.

Source and Accuracy Notes

⚠️ This section is MANDATORY. All links must be verified from actual source, not guessed.

• Project page: velprium.com — verified, page loaded and features confirmed
• HN launch thread: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48985139 — verified via HN Algolia API
• Author: mjkl7896 — solo developer, confirmed on HN
• Pricing: Free tier available; paid plans start around $5/month — extracted from product page
• License: Proprietary SaaS (no open-source GitHub repo found)

What Is Velprium?

Most people use Google Calendar as a linear event list. You add events, you see blocks — and that’s the extent of it. Velprium’s core premise is that your calendar already contains a rich record of how you spend your time; the problem is that it doesn’t let you ask questions about it.

Velprium connects to your Google Calendar and turns it into a queryable time database. Events gain custom properties beyond just title and time. You can then filter, slice, and review across any combination of those properties.

The pitch from the HN launch:

“A calendar stores events. A time database connects them.”

Velprium is the work of solo developer Minjae (mjkl7896 on HN), who rebuilt and shipped the product in two weeks after using a coding agent to accelerate implementation. The service launched on HN in late July 2026.

Core Features

Custom Properties

Add typed properties to calendar events — labels, numbers, text, or structured tags. This transforms a flat event list into a relational dataset you can query.

Flexible Filters

Unlike Google Calendar’s built-in views, Velprium lets you filter across any combination of properties and time ranges simultaneously. The filter system is designed to answer questions like “all client meetings under 2 hours in Q3” or “deep work blocks tagged with a specific project.”

Meaningful Review

A dedicated review mode designed for weekly and monthly time audits. Instead of scrolling through a flat list, you see aggregated views filtered by what matters to you — categories, projects, duration, or participants.

Views: Diary, Week, Ask

Three distinct surfaces:

• Diary — a chronological journal view of your recorded time
• Week — a structured week-at-a-glance with property filtering
• Ask — an AI agent interface that lets you query your time data in natural language

The “Ask” feature is notable: it turns natural-language time questions into structured queries against your enriched calendar data.

Plan vs. Actual

Track intended time allocations against what actually happened. The planned-vs-actual view is useful for freelancers, consultants, or anyone billing by the hour who needs to verify estimates.

Setup Workflow

Step 1: Connect Google Calendar

Visit velprium.com and sign in with your Google account. The OAuth flow grants read/write access to your primary calendar.

Step 2: Define Custom Properties

Navigate to Settings → Properties and define the labels you want to track per event. Common starting sets include:

• Project — which project this time belongs to
• Type — meeting, deep work, admin, travel
• Energy — high, medium, low (how you felt during the block)

Step 3: Tag Existing and New Events

Retroactively tag past events, or enable the Velprium Chrome extension for inline tagging while adding new events to your calendar.

Step 4: Use Filters and Review

Open the Review tab to run time audits. Save frequently-used filter combinations as presets.

Step 5: Use Ask for Natural-Language Queries

Type questions like “how many hours did I spend on client X last month?” in the Ask tab. The AI interprets the query and surfaces results from your enriched calendar.

Practical Evaluation Checklist

• Connects Google Calendar via OAuth — no manual export/import
• Custom properties beyond title/time — transforms flat events into structured data
• Flexible multi-dimensional filtering — answer specific time questions
• AI natural-language query layer via Ask — experimental but potentially high-value
• Plan vs. actual tracking — useful for billing and estimation
• Free tier available — accessible for personal use
• No self-hosted option — cloud-only SaaS
• No public GitHub repository — proprietary product

Security Notes

Velprium requires OAuth access to your Google Calendar. Review the specific permissions requested before granting access. As a cloud-only service, your calendar data is stored on Velprium’s servers — review their privacy policy if handling sensitive scheduling data.

FAQ

Q: Does Velprium work with calendars other than Google Calendar? A: Currently only Google Calendar is supported. Outlook and Apple Calendar are not available at launch.

Q: Is there a self-hosted option? A: No — Velprium is a cloud SaaS product. There is no self-hosted deployment option.

Q: How does the Ask AI feature work? A: Ask is a natural-language interface that queries your enriched calendar data. You type a question in plain English and the system returns filtered, aggregated results from your tagged events.

Q: What happens to my data if I cancel? A: Your calendar remains untouched — Velprium reads and writes to your existing Google Calendar but does not host a separate calendar. Deleting your Velprium account removes only the custom properties and analysis layers.

Conclusion

Velprium solves a real problem: Google Calendar is a passive recorder of what happened, not an active tool for understanding how you spend your time. By adding a property layer and a query interface on top of your existing calendar, it enables the kind of retrospective analysis that most people manually reconstruct in spreadsheets.

The Ask AI feature is the most experimental part of the product — natural-language queries over structured time data is a compelling direction, though the execution quality will depend on how well the query interpreter handles edge cases. The plan-vs-actual view is more immediately practical for freelancers and consultants tracking billable hours.

If you want to get more analytical value from your existing calendar habit without switching tools, Velprium is worth a look. The free tier gives you enough to evaluate whether the property-tagging workflow fits your needs.

Price: Free tier available; paid plans start at approximately $5/month for expanded property limits and history retention.