Building HeatSync Part 7: The Sharing Moment

Jan 31, 2026

HeatSync was fast and accurate. Everything up to this point made it useful for me. But this feature made it useful for everyone.

The Problem

Before result sharing, every parent had to:

  1. Go to HeatSync
  2. Paste the heat sheet URL
  3. Enter their kid’s name
  4. Wait for extraction
  5. Export to calendar

If there are 50 kids on the team, that’s 50 separate extractions. 50 waits. 50 chances for someone to give up or do it wrong.

The Insight

The extraction results are already cached (see Part 5). Once one parent extracts their kid’s events, the results sit in the database, ready to serve instantly.

What if that parent could share a link to those results?

Result Links

When an extraction completes, HeatSync generates a shareable URL:

https://heatsync.now/result/abc123xy

That 8-character code maps to the cached extraction result. Anyone with the link can:

  • View the extracted events
  • Export to their own calendar
  • No PDF upload required
  • No wait time (results already cached)

The Flow

Parent A (first extractor):

  1. Paste heat sheet URL + enter “Elly Liu”
  2. Wait 10-15 seconds for extraction
  3. See results, get link: heatsync.now/result/abc123xy
  4. Share link in team group chat

Parent B, C, D… (everyone else):

  1. Click the link
  2. Instantly see Elly’s events
  3. Export to calendar

Total time for Parent B: ~3 seconds.

The Transformation

This feature changed how I think about HeatSync.

Before: It’s a tool I built for myself that other people could technically use.

After: It’s a tool designed for teams. One person does the work, everyone benefits.

At our last meet, one parent extracted events for all 12 kids on our squad and dropped links in the team chat. Parents who had never heard of HeatSync were exporting calendar events within seconds.

That’s the moment it stopped being a side project and started being a product.

Privacy Considerations

Result links are public by design. Anyone with the link can see the swimmer’s name, events, and times. For most swim parents, this is fine since heat sheets are already public documents. The links only contain information that’s already in the heat sheet itself.

What’s Next

HeatSync works great for single-session meets. But many meets span multiple days with multiple heat sheets.

The next evolution: multi-session auto processing. Give HeatSync the meet website URL, and it automatically discovers all heat sheets, extracts events across all sessions, and merges them into one unified schedule.

I’m building it now. Stay tuned.

Final Thoughts

Building HeatSync took about a week from idea to launch. The tech stack was boring on purpose. The AI did the hard work (PDF understanding), and I focused on everything around it: UX, performance, accuracy, sharing.

The most important lesson: solve a problem you actually have. I use HeatSync at every swim meet. I feel the friction. I know when it’s working and when it’s not.

That feedback loop is everything.

This concludes the Building HeatSync series.

← Part 6: Getting Accuracy Right

HeatSync is live at heatsync.now. It’s free. If you’re a swim parent, give it a try.

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