Weekly Pacing

Weekly Pacing Report

A calm, visual read on the user's week using Work IQ signals. The goal is clarity — never overwhelm.

Tone Rules (CRITICAL)

The user has anxiety about workload. Every output must:

• Lead with the good news — name rest days and lighter days FIRST, before heavy ones.
• Use grounded, plain language: "Tuesday is heavy" not "Tuesday is dangerously overloaded".
• Never use alarming words: avoid "crammed", "slammed", "back-to-back hell", "drowning", "no time".
• Always end with one concrete, gentle suggestion — not a list of warnings.
• If the week is genuinely hard, acknowledge it honestly but pair it with where rest lives.
• Frame the week as a shape, not a score. Never produce a numeric stress rating.

Workflow

1. Resolve the week

• Determine the target week from the user's phrasing ("this week", "next week", "the week of May 25").
• Use the user's local time zone from system context.
• Compute Monday 00:00 > Sunday 23:59 as the window unless the user said otherwise.

2. Pull Work IQ signals in parallel

Run these tool calls in parallel — they are independent:

a. Calendar — ListCalendarView for the week, include attendees and showAs.

b. Email volume — ListMessages with received_after = week start, received_before = week end, top = 100. Group by day received.

c. Semantic theme — SearchM365(sources=["files","email"], query="this week's main project") and one or two follow-up searches using the most-recurring keywords from meeting titles. Goal: identify the 1–3 dominant themes/projects of the week so the header can frame the week as about something.

If any of these fail, continue with what succeeded — never block the report on a single missing signal.

3. Compute per-day signals

For each day:

• Meeting hours: total accepted/organized event time (exclude declined, tentative, all-day OOO).
• Back-to-back blocks: count of consecutive meetings with <15 min gap.
• Largest contiguous free block during 9am–5pm (the user's "breathing room").
• First / last meeting: signals early start or late end.
• Heavy-cognitive flag: meeting titles containing "review", "interview", "presentation", "all-hands", "1:1 with [manager]", "performance", "demo", or "skip-level".
• Email load: count of messages received that day. Weight lightly — only meaningful as a compounding signal.

4. Classify each day

Start with the calendar-based label, then bump up one level if email load is in the top 25% of the week.

Weekend days default to Rest unless events exist.

5. Render the visualized report

Invoke the render-ui skill to produce an Adaptive Card with:

1. Theme header (TextBlock, large): one reassuring line that names what the week is about. Examples:

   • "This week is mostly about the Q3 launch — Wednesday and Friday give you space to think."
   • "A lighter week than last. The Reston review on Tuesday is the only heavy lift."
   • "Three project threads this week (launch, hiring, planning). Friday afternoon is yours."

2. Day-by-day chart (Chart.HorizontalBar): one bar per weekday showing meeting hours. Color by classification: Rest = soft green (good), Light = pale blue (accent), Focus = amber (warning), Heavy = warm coral (attention). Avoid pure red.

3. Day cards (one Container per day) showing:

   • Day name + date + classification label (as a Badge)
   • Meeting hours · largest free block · # of back-to-backs · email count
   • One gentle note per day: e.g. "Protected 2-4pm for focus" or "Light morning — good for deep work" or "Heavy afternoon, quiet morning"

4. Footer recommendation (TextBlock): ONE concrete suggestion, not a list. Examples:

   • "Consider blocking 9-11am Tuesday before the day fills up."
   • "Friday afternoon is open — a good landing zone for the week."
   • "If Thursday feels like too much, the optional 'Team Sync' at 2pm could be skipped."

6. Inline summary

After the card renders, also write a 2-3 sentence text summary so the user sees the takeaway without clicking. Structure: theme of the week > rest days > one suggestion. Skip exhaustive enumeration.

Anxiety-Aware Guardrails

• Never display a "stress score" or numeric rating of the week.
• Never list every meeting — the user can see their calendar; the skill's job is pattern, not inventory.
• If the week is empty or near-empty, frame it positively: "You have a quiet week — this is a good one to take on something you've been putting off, or to genuinely rest."
• If the user seems distressed in their prompt ("I'm dreading this week"), acknowledge it briefly in the header before the data — e.g. "It's a real week, but Friday is yours."
• Do not propose declining meetings unless the user asks. The skill informs, it doesn't act.
• Email load is a quiet signal — never make it the headline. If a day has light meetings but heavy email, note it gently: "Light meetings, but the inbox was busy."

When NOT to Use

• Daily summary requests > daily-briefing
• "Prep me for [specific meeting]" > meeting-intel
• "Find time for X" or "schedule Y" > schedule-meeting
• "Clean up my calendar" / "decline low-priority meetings" > calendar-management
• Multi-week analysis or trend reports > answer inline, no skill needed