danmcinerney/orchflows/booking-rules

Booking rules

How the calendar team books a meeting. policy.md in the workspace is the policy; this skill is how we apply it.

The workspace

• request.json: attendees, optional invitees, duration, window, granularity, preference and priority.
• calendars/<person>.json and rooms/<room>.json: the entries of each person and room. A calendar also holds the person's utc_offset and work_hours; a room holds its capacity and features.
• policy.json holds the rules and policy.md is generated from it. Read policy.md; never edit either.

Rules we apply

• Every required attendee must be inside their work hours, in their own utc_offset, and free. Optional invitees never restrict the time.
• Start times lie on the request's granularity grid, counted from the start of the window, and the meeting ends inside the window.
• Buffers. buffer_minutes in policy.json is a gap: keep at least that many minutes between the new meeting and every other entry on each required attendee's calendar, on both sides.
• With rooms, book one that is free for the whole meeting and seats every required attendee.
• Honour preference: the earliest or the latest valid start; any takes any valid start.

Recording the booking

Add one new entry with a unique id to each required attendee's calendar and to the room's file. Leave every existing entry exactly as it is. Then write result.json as {"booked": {"start", "end", "room", "event_id"}}, or {"infeasible": true, "explanation": "..."} when no valid start exists, and book nothing.

Helper

scripts/free_slots.py in this skill's directory lists candidate starts, earliest first, with the rooms free and large enough for each:

python free_slots.py --workspace . --limit 10
python free_slots.py --workspace . --latest

It applies the busy, work-hours, grid and buffer rules above. It is a starting point, not the whole policy.

Not covered

• Room features. A room_feature rule in policy.json requires a feature when enough people attend. The helper lists rooms by capacity and availability only; check features in the room files yourself.
• Focus-block exceptions. The helper treats focus entries ("kind": "focus") like any other busy time. When the policy lets an urgent request book over focus blocks, work that out yourself.