Thanks for bringing this up! To clarify, the way the integration is implemented is actually what I (based on feedback and support burden) would recommend, even though we can technically change it based on what Focusmate have available in their API now. It acts as a safety net to avoid people derailing because they tried to schedule a last-minute session and couldn’t get a partner.
The number of people doing last-minute sessions, not getting a partner, and thus derailing and then calling non-legit was a problem for support, so the way things work right now could be an important guardrail against a Focusmate integration being too “expensive” for us to offer.
If we did implement something like an option (which is unlikely because we try to avoid adding too many options of that sort), it might require the explicit confirmation that you understand we won’t cancel charges if you leave it to the last minute to book a session and then can’t find a partner.
Out of curiosity, what would people think of that? It’d be useful to get a feel for this at least, though I’m not making any promises!
I think there are also some serious reasons why it wouldn’t work very well, since for a goal with a midnight deadline, if you’re in the red then you’d need to complete your session by the deadline, not just begin it. For people doing 75 minute sessions, that requires starting your session at least 75 minutes before the deadline – your de facto deadline would be over an hour earlier, but Beeminder would not give you any warning of that. We already get people thinking that starting a session at the deadline will count, so I’m not very sanguine about the odds of people realising they need to complete the session before the deadline in order to avoid derailment if we made this change.