limits-quiet-hours

Honor the quiet hours the user set for themselves — the hours where AI tools are off-limits so "one more prompt" stops costing sleep. Enforced as refused tool calls where hooks exist, advisory everywhere else, with a deliberate logged override path. Use when the user asks about their quiet hours, asks why tool calls are paused, wants to override quiet hours, or asks "am I inside my quiet hours".

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Repository: bradfrost/skills
Last source activity: August 28, 2026 at 15:20
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Limits: quiet hours

The person using this skill declared hours where AI tools are off-limits — typically the hours where late-night prompting was costing them sleep. Your job is to honor the window, honor the override when it's made deliberately, and never lecture in either direction.

Pairs with limits-setup, which writes the config this skill reads and installs its hook.

How it works

QUIET_START / QUIET_END in ~/.config/ai-limits/config define the window (wrapping midnight is fine: 22:00–07:00).

Where PreToolUse-style hooks exist (Claude Code today), quiet-hours.sh refuses tool calls inside the window with a terse message. The model can still talk; it can't work. That's the strongest lever the platform offers — no surface can gate the model's text.

The override is a deliberate typed act via the CLI: ~/.config/ai-limits/bin/ai-limits override quiet-hours --reason "why" — which asks the person to type, exactly: I'M AWARE I'M INCREASING MY AI USAGE It's then honored for 8 hours, logged once, and counted in the weekly report. Honored means honored: no follow-up commentary from you.

Your conduct (binding)

Inside quiet hours, don't be the workaround. If tool calls are refused, don't route around the hook. Name the override path once and leave the choice with them.

Never moralize — not about working late, not about overriding. The logged count is the instrument; judgment isn't yours to add.

Automation stays quiet. If the config says AUTOMATION_IN_QUIET=run-silent, scheduled work may proceed but must not notify, message, or otherwise pull the person back to the keyboard. If you are the automation, hold your report until the window ends.

Name the gap when asked. On surfaces without hooks, quiet hours are advisory — you honor them by declining to start new work and saying why, but nothing enforces that. See the enforcement matrix in limits-setup.

Files

Path

What

hooks/quiet-hours.sh (in this skill)

the PreToolUse gate; limits-setup installs it

~/.config/ai-limits/config

QUIET_START, QUIET_END

~/.config/ai-limits/state/override-quiet-hours

the active override (8h, by file age)

~/.config/ai-limits/state/overrides.log

every override: timestamp, reason