| name | limits-quiet-hours |
| description | 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". |
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 |
