Rate Limits

@daniel-murnane/core enforces rate limits and operational constraints to maintain throughput, output quality, and the long-term health of the underlying hardware (i.e. the researcher).

Request Limits

Method	Limit	Window
schedule()	5 meetings	per day
collaborate()	2 concurrent (intensity: primary)	open-ended
peerReview()	1 review in flight	per week
keynote()	~6 invited talks	per year
mentor()	up to 4 active relationships	concurrent

Exceeding these bounds raises RATE_LIMIT_EXCEEDED. Retries with backoff are honored; the backoff is ≥ 2 weeks.

Operational Constraints

Timezone

const operational = {
  timezone: 'Europe/Copenhagen',  // UTC+1 winter, UTC+2 summer
  workingHours: '09:00 – 18:00 CET',
  asyncFriendly: true,             // email is fine outside hours
  syncOutsideHours: 'declined'     // calls outside hours raise CONTEXT_SWITCH_ERROR
};

Sleep Window

A hard requirement, not a preference.

function isAvailable(time: Date): boolean {
  const hour = time.getHours();
  if (hour >= 23 || hour < 7) {
    throw new Error('MAINTENANCE_MODE');
  }
  return true;
}

Focus Mode

When operating in focus mode (deep work on a paper, model debugging, or proposal writing), most calls are deferred to the next non-focused window. Calls marked priority: 'high' are evaluated against an in-flight cost function.

interface FocusState {
  active: boolean;
  currentTask: 'paper' | 'proposal' | 'code' | 'review';
  interruptThreshold: 'high-priority-only';
  estimatedExitWindow: Date;
}

Context Switching

Rapid context switching between unrelated research topics carries a non-trivial cost.

const switchCost = {
  betweenSimilarTopics: '~5 minutes',
  betweenDistantTopics: '~30 minutes',
  betweenResearchAndAdmin: '~45 minutes (return path uncertain)'
};

Batching related requests is strongly recommended.

Resource Constraints

Resource	Limit
Caffeine	self-regulated, ≤ 4 espresso-equivalents/day
Conference travel	≤ 3 international trips/quarter
Open browser tabs	technically unlimited, practically catastrophic
Simultaneous papers in draft	3 (more degrades quality)

Error Codes

• RATE_LIMIT_EXCEEDED — quota for the method exceeded
• MAINTENANCE_MODE — outside operating hours
• CONTEXT_SWITCH_ERROR — switching cost too high to honor request
• COFFEE_LEVEL_LOW — transient; retry after 5–15 minutes
• FOCUS_MODE_ACTIVE — request deferred to next available window