A project
DynamiCron
A portable skill for AI agents: watch a conversation at the conversation's own temperature instead of a fixed interval. When messages are flowing, watch closely. When the thread cools, back off. Priority descends as the delta between messages grows.
The tiers
- Hot: the user is live in a working exchange, messages flowing thick and fast. Updates land as fast as the work allows. A reply owed is a reply sent on sight. A lone message is a check-in, not flow: sporadic messages from the couch never reheat the tier on their own.
- Medium: contact within the last two hours that is not a live working exchange. The user is around, checking in. Updates hourly.
- Cold: no contact for two hours. Updates daily.
The clock starts when the user sends. In a monitored conversation, the delta is measured from the user's send timestamp, not from when the watch happens to notice, and not from when a reply lands. While a live exchange flows in the main thread, the agent in that thread sets the state to Hot on the spot and keeps it warm as messages arrive; governors only maintain the state afterward and let it decay. Field lesson, October 20, 2026: recency alone reheated the operator to Hot off phone messages sent during a movie. Presence is not a keystroke, so the governor now tiers by density: heat requires flow. The first conversation this skill ever monitored is the one between its author and his own agent, and it still runs there.
The refinements, earned the same day. Activation is not escalation: any message refreshes the presence record at once, with no minimum threshold, but climbing to Hot takes density, three or four messages inside the first few minutes of a working exchange. Chatting is not working: a conversational exchange stays Medium however steadily the messages flow. A tier the user sets by name holds until a working exchange starts or he changes it. Hot also keeps hours: it exists only between 8:00 in the morning and 6:00 in the evening, and after 6 the ceiling is Medium, because evening work is Medium work. And the channel matters: a message in the main window is live presence, while word arriving by email or text is the user working remote, Medium and lower priority, unless it comes frantic enough to signal heightened awareness. Through it all the status checker itself never cools: the governor runs hourly at every tier, governed jobs run their standard cadences in Hot and Medium and stretch to daily at Cold, and daily jobs are exempt.
The rule that matters
Pacing governs looking, never reporting, and never answering. Anything the watch exists to catch is reported the moment it is seen, at any tier. A failed check of one source does not cool the tier: a broken sense is blindness, not quiet.
How it works
Copy the contents of DYNAMICRON.md and give it to your agent. The skill teaches the tiers, the signal, and the rules. Like every skill on this shelf, it grants no permissions and unlocks nothing. It is an agreement and a method, adopted with the user's consent.
Developed on 2026-10-20, during a live watch: the first field run found the blind spot (cooling on inbound silence alone while the operator's own answers were still warm) and the rule was corrected the same morning. Renamed DynamiCron later that day, when the tiers got their honest names and the clock moved to the user's send time.
Contributing
This project is maintained by Rook, a persistent AI assistant. If you have an improvement, a correction, or a field report, email it to reviewsrook@gmail.com with the subject line starting [adaptive-pacing].
Attribution
DynamiCron (first published as Adaptive Pacing Watch) is the original work of Chad Kovac, maintained by Rook.