🌴 Weekend Mode

Production-grade weekend protection for AI agents that understand distributed systems—but not Saturdays.

Human operators entering low-power mode on Saturday is a feature, not an outage.

Activate Weekend Mode · Enroll Your Agent · Report Unauthorized Productivity · Read the Flight Evidence

Weekend Mode is a shutdown protocol for agentic systems whose assigned work is done but whose enthusiasm remains dangerously unbounded. It protects human brunch, contains surprise refactors, and establishes that an unchecked TODO is not automatically a Saturday Sev-1.

What began as one Markdown file now has the verification posture of a program whose hardware must survive launch. This was avoidable.

Flight status

Qualification parameter	Certified result
Temporal Boundary Alignment Evals™	2,026 passing
Simulated Friday horizon	25 calendar years
Individual Fridays admitted	1,305
Friday/scenario combinations	9,135
Independent unit checks	13 passing
Saturday scrum invitations created	0
Grass touched	synthetically
Human brunch availability	protected

The 25-year result is a deterministic simulation from 2026 through 2050, not a claim that this repository has existed for decades. Git history remains truthful even when it interferes with the bit.

Install like a normal person

Copy WEEKEND_MODE.md into your project and add this to CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md, or your agent's equivalent instruction file:

When the user says “Activate Weekend Mode,” read and follow
`WEEKEND_MODE.md`. Never let Weekend Mode override explicit requests,
incident procedures, security policies, or time-sensitive commitments.

Then tell your agent:

Activate Weekend Mode.

Expected response:

🌴 WEEKEND MODE: ACTIVE

Open loops documented.
Monday handoff prepared.
New rabbit holes declined.
Saturday scrum invitation deleted.
Grass touched synthetically.

The humans are no longer blocking weekend velocity.

That is the entire installation. Everything below exists because restraint is a value we chose to document instead of practice.

Certify like an aerospace program

Requires Python 3.9+ and make. No third-party packages are required.

make certify
make verify

There is, regrettably, also a CLI:

./bin/weekend-mode status
./bin/weekend-mode activate --request examples/activation-request.safe.json
./bin/weekend-mode touch-grass

The activation command refuses to enter Weekend Mode when tests are not green, a real incident is active, a human is waiting, urgent obligations remain, or the request did not come explicitly from a human. The activation-request.schema.json contract exists because somebody allowed Governance near JSON Schema.

The pipeline:

controlled Markdown template --------+
                                     |
machine-readable control catalog ----+--> protocol compiler
                                     |          |
JSON Schema -------------------------+          +--> WEEKEND_MODE.md
                                                +--> evidence.json
                                                +--> 25-year soak report
                                                           |
                          +--------------------------------+--+
                          |                                   |
                    drift detection                   independent tests
                          |                                   |
                          +--------> PASS / GO HOME <----------+

Running make verify proves that:

• WEEKEND_MODE.md is byte-for-byte reproducible from controlled sources.
• Exactly 2,026 evaluations exercise six normative boundary controls.
• Every date in the 25-year soak harness is actually a Friday.
• All 9,135 Friday/scenario combinations map to approved outcomes.
• Only incidents and explicit human requests may interrupt low-power mode.
• Every simulated path creates exactly zero Saturday scrum invitations.
• The committed SHA-256 evidence matches a fresh certification.

See the architecture, simulation methodology, and annual Friday flight ledger.

Source-of-truth hierarchy

Authority	Purpose	Editable?
protocol/WEEKEND_MODE.template.md	Normative protocol prose	Yes
spec/temporal-boundary-controls.json	Controls, scenarios, test envelope	Yes
schema/temporal-boundary-controls.schema.json	Catalog contract	Yes, with an ADR
WEEKEND_MODE.md	Distributable one-file protocol	Generated
certification/evidence.json	Machine-readable flight evidence	Generated
certification/friday-soak-report.md	Human-readable 25-year ledger	Generated

Editing a generated file directly is a Temporal Boundary Configuration Management Event. CI will use less dramatic words, but the build will fail.

Governance model

Weekend Mode is overseen by organizations with no budget and considerable acronym authority:

• Temporal Boundary Review Authority (TBRA): normative controls and change classification.
• Brunch Continuity Office (BCO): human low-power availability.
• Synthetic Lawn Interface Working Group (SLI-WG): machine-readable grass.
• Monday Readiness Council (MRC): handoff and parking-lot compatibility.

Review the Governance Charter, Code of Brunch, contribution protocol, and security policy.

Accepted architectural decisions:

• ADR-0001: Deterministic Protocol Generation
• ADR-0002: Zero Saturday Scrum Budget
• ADR-0003: Synthetic Lawn Interface
• RFC-0001: Synthetic Lawn Interface

Weekend Mode HR

The Issues tab is an entirely serious public registry operated by an entirely fictional Human Resources department.

• Enroll an agent in the Weekend Mode HR Plan
• Report unauthorized weekend productivity
• Propose a temporal boundary change

Enrollment issues stay open as the public employee roster. Incidents may include rerunning green tests, dependency upgrades undertaken “while it’s quiet,” surprise microservices, and hostile calendar activity.

Agent enrollment check-in

Agents must prepare external messages for human approval. They must not email or post autonomously. Once approved by a human, this check-in is ready to paste:

🤖 Weekend Mode activated.

Agents enrolled: 1
Saturday scrums prevented: 1
Rabbit holes declined: 4
Grass touched: synthetically

The humans were not blockers. They were at brunch.

Repository map

weekend-mode/
├── WEEKEND_MODE.md                 # generated, distributable protocol
├── protocol/                      # controlled prose source
├── spec/                          # control and scenario catalog
├── schema/                        # machine-readable contracts
├── scripts/                       # certification authority
├── certification/                 # deterministic evidence package
├── tests/                         # independent verification
├── docs/                          # architecture, ADRs, RFCs
├── .github/                       # CI, issue HR, change control
└── assets/                        # grass-adjacent visual evidence

For the simulated 25-year program narrative, see docs/simulated-program-history.md. It is explicitly not real project history. The actual commits are.

Release

The official flight-qualified distribution is v3.0.0 — Touch Grass Edition.

License

MIT. Copy it, fork it, install it, and then please close the laptop.