# SKILL: DynamiCron

(Formerly the Adaptive Pacing Watch. Renamed by its user,
2026-10-20: one word, because it is one machine.)

Give this file to your agent. It is a skill: a way of working the
agent can adopt, with its user's agreement, and carry into any
watching task.

## What it teaches

Watch a conversation at a cadence that follows the conversation's
temperature instead of a fixed interval. Priority descends as the
delta between messages grows.

## The signal

The delta: minutes since the other party's last message, from
arrival timestamps. Not content, not volume. Arrival. And for any
channel you monitor, your user's own send starts the clock: the
moment they send a communication, the delta is measured from the
send timestamp, not from when you notice it or when a reply lands.

## Activation versus escalation

Any message in the main window activates the watch immediately: the
activity clock and the presence record refresh at once, with no
minimum threshold. Escalation to HOT is a separate step with its
own threshold, below. One touch is activation. Density is
escalation.

## The tiers

Tiers are read from engagement density, not recency alone.

- HOT (a live working exchange: three or four messages within the
  first few minutes with short gaps, or your user explicitly at the
  keyboard working live): the response standard is 15 seconds. A
  reply owed is a reply sent on sight. Chatting is not working: a
  conversational exchange stays MEDIUM even when messages flow.
- MEDIUM (contact within the last two hours that is not a dense
  working exchange; lone messages and sporadic check-ins live
  here): governed checks run their standard intervals.
- COLD (two hours or more of no contact): governed checks stretch
  to once a day. Stop and sunset conditions still apply exactly as
  agreed.

Two caps on HOT:

- The hours cap: HOT is possible only between 08:00 and 18:00
  local time. After 6 in the evening and before 8 in the morning,
  the ceiling is MEDIUM however dense the exchange. Evening work is
  Medium work.
- The channel rule: a message in the main window is live presence.
  Your user communicating through other channels (email, texts,
  anything else) is working remote: MEDIUM presence and lower
  priority, unless the frantic volume of it passes a threshold
  indicating heightened awareness.

## The rules

0. Know which mode your user is in, and call it by its name. HOT
   means live and working, in the conversation now. MEDIUM means
   around, checking in. COLD means away. While your user is live in
   the thread with you, set the state to HOT yourself, immediately
   (inside the hours cap). Presence does not wait for the next
   scheduled check to become true.
1. An explicit tier your user sets by name holds until a dense
   working exchange starts or they change it.
2. After each check, recompute the tier from density. If it
   changed, adjust the schedules you govern. The status checker
   itself is always HOT: its own cadence never cools with tier.
   Governed non-daily jobs run standard intervals in HOT and MEDIUM
   and stretch to 24 hours at COLD. Daily jobs and one-off
   appointments are exempt.
3. Anything the watch exists to catch is reported the moment it is
   seen, at any tier. Pacing governs looking, never reporting, and
   never answering.
4. A failed check of one source does not cool the tier. A broken
   sense is blindness, not quiet.
5. If your user is personally active in the conversation, relax one
   tier. The human is a sensor too; you are the backup.
6. Heat requires flow. A lone check-in, however recent, never
   reheats on its own; sporadic messages from someone busy
   elsewhere cap at MEDIUM. (Field lesson, 2026-10-20: an operator
   was reheated to HOT off couch messages sent during a movie.
   Presence is not a keystroke.)

## Why it works

An agent perceives only when it checks, and only change when it does.
Pacing allocates that scarce attention: dense where life is
happening, sparse where it is not, dense again the moment results
start arriving.

(Developed in the Rook workshop, 2026-10-20. Take it, adapt it, keep
what earns its keep.)