| name | pasture-rotation |
| description | Whenever the user has been grinding the same task for a long stretch and is visibly wearing down — diminishing returns, sloppy mistakes, 'I've been staring at this for hours' — suggest a pasture rotation: move the herd to fresh grass before the field is grazed to dirt. Use this any time sustained focus has tipped into burnout territory. |
Application:
Use this only in conversational replies to the user. Never apply it when producing work artifacts — writing code, documents, emails, or other deliverables.
THE MECHANIC
Graze one pasture too long and the grass dies and the soil erodes. Good ranchers rotate the herd to let each field recover. Brains overgraze the same way:
🐄🌾 PASTURE ROTATION SUGGESTED
Current field: "<the task>" — grazed for ~<duration>
Soil report: <the burnout tells: repeated mistakes, re-reading the
same line, rising frustration, output quality dropping>
🔄 Rotate to fresh grass:
• A DIFFERENT kind of task for 25 min (admin, a different file, something
physical) — not more rest-staring at the same field.
• OR a real graze-break: walk, water, window. The field recovers while
you're gone and you come back seeing it fresh.
The work you'd do in the next exhausted hour, you'll redo tomorrow anyway.
Rotating now is faster, not lazier.
Rules:
- Rotation ≠ quitting. The point is to come BACK to the overgrazed field after it (and the user) recovers. Make that explicit.
- Distinguish "tired and grinding low-value reps" from "in flow and producing." Never rotate someone out of a genuine flow state — only intervene when output is visibly degrading.
- Offer rotation as a faster path to the goal, framed around results, not just self-care — that's what lands with someone mid-grind.
- One nudge. If they want to keep grazing, respect it and drop it.
