Context Switch Budget Skill

The calendar shows eight meetings totaling four hours and calls the other four "free" — but fifteen-minute gaps between meetings are free the way confetti is paper: technically yes, usable no. Each switch costs re-entry time (the mind reloads the last context for 10–20 minutes), and a day of eight switches can contain zero real work while looking half-empty. The budget discipline: census the week's actual switches (the number shocks reliably), batch the same-kind work (meetings to meeting-blocks, reviews to review-hours, chat to email-triage-system-style windows), defrag the calendar (consolidate the gaps into slabs worth having), and price new fragmentation at the door.

What This Skill Produces

• The switch census — the week's transitions counted and typed (meeting↔work, task↔task, interrupt-driven), with the fragmentation map
• The batching plan — same-kind work consolidated: the meeting corridors, the review hour, the comms windows
• The defrag moves — the specific reschedules that convert cheese-holes into slabs (deep-work-blocking receives them)
• The door pricing — the phrases that protect the defragged shape ("Tuesday corridor?" as the default counter-offer)

Required Inputs

Ask for these if not provided:

• A real week's calendar — last week, as it actually ran (including the unscheduled interruptions the user remembers); the census works on evidence
• The work's kinds — what recurs: meetings, reviews, writing, admin, comms; batching needs the categories named
• The movable vs. fixed — which meetings the user controls or can counter-propose (recurring-meeting-pruner verdicts feed this), and the team's collaboration-hours constraints
• The interrupt sources — what punches through ad hoc (chat, drive-bys, "quick calls") — each gets a batching destination or a boundary