feat(daily-prep): add 5-day look-ahead, daily big-ball, and decline gate

I folded in three additions from the Manager Tools prep research. Phase A now fetches the prep day plus the next 5 days, and a new Phase 1 sub-section scans that window for meetings that need prep, scheduling traps, and focus blocks to protect. It's a scan-and-flag pass that feeds Heads-up and Anchor Tasks, not a new prep-doc section. Phase 3 sub-step 3a pulls one important-but-not-urgent task per day for a 15-minute chunk, so strategic work lands in small daily pieces instead of getting displaced by the urgent. Phase 1 item 5 reframes "attend" as "contribute" and adds a send-regrets gate for meetings with no objective. The look-ahead's meeting-prep references stay conditional ("where the project has one") since meeting-prep is project-only for now.

1 files changed, 18 insertions, 4 deletions

diff --git a/claude-templates/.ai/workflows/daily-prep.org b/claude-templates/.ai/workflows/daily-prep.org
index e58fd88..fcc983d 100644
--- a/claude-templates/.ai/workflows/daily-prep.org
+++ b/claude-templates/.ai/workflows/daily-prep.org
@@ -153,8 +153,8 @@ This rule applies to all phases including Phase 1's "collaborative review" line
 
 Before any synthesis or interaction, pull every source the prep doc needs in a *single batch of parallel tool calls*. These reads are all independent — issue them in one message, not as a sequential round-trip per source:
 
-1. =mcp__google-calendar__list-events= for the *personal* account, scoped to the day being prepped.
-2. =mcp__google-calendar__list-events= for the *work* account, same scope.
+1. =mcp__google-calendar__list-events= for the *personal* account, scoped to the day being prepped *plus the next 5 days*. The prep-day subset feeds Phases 1, 4, and 6; the forward window feeds the 5-Day Look-Ahead in Phase 1.
+2. =mcp__google-calendar__list-events= for the *work* account, same scope (prep day + next 5 days).
 3. Grep =~/.emacs.d/data/pcal.org= for items on that day. This is the Proton Calendar export (=pcal= = personal calendar). The same directory has =gcal.org= and =dcal.org= for Google personal + DeepSat, but those are already covered by the MCP queries in steps 1 and 2 — only =pcal.org= adds non-redundant items.
 4. Read =todo.org= — collect [#A] and [#B] tasks plus anything with DEADLINE: or SCHEDULED: touching the day.
 5. List + read the *previous* prep doc. Glob =daily-prep/*-daily-prep.org= (all prep docs live there, born and kept — no separate archive). Sort by date and take the file *before* the one the root =daily-prep.org= symlink currently resolves to — usually yesterday's, but may be older if Craig was off (PTO, weekend, missed days). If the symlink doesn't resolve yet (no prep ever run), take the most recent file by date. The lookback for the standup brief is anchored on this file's date, so accuracy matters.
@@ -170,9 +170,9 @@ Working from the Phase A calendar snapshot, present each meeting with:
 2. *Meeting name*
 3. *Owner* (who scheduled/owns the meeting)
 4. *Official agenda* (from calendar description)
-5. *What Craig needs from this meeting* -- decisions to drive, points to make, information to convey, people to persuade
+5. *What Craig needs from this meeting — his objective and contribution.* Not just "attend" but the active role: decisions to drive, points to make, information to convey, people to persuade (the attending-to-contributing reframe). And apply the gate: *is there a purpose here for Craig, or is this a send-regrets candidate?* "He was invited" isn't a reason to attend — if there's no objective and no contribution to make, flag the meeting as a decline candidate for Craig's call at review.
 
-For the last item, Claude may not know Craig's goals for the meeting. Present what's known and Craig will clarify during review.
+For the objective and contribution, Claude may not know Craig's goals for the meeting. Present what's known and Craig will clarify during review.
 
 *** 1:1 Meeting Prep
 
@@ -190,6 +190,16 @@ For the last item, Claude may not know Craig's goals for the meeting. Present wh
 
 Capture the meeting list with what's known about each (time, owner, official agenda, who's accepted vs declined, what Craig might need). Don't stop here for Craig's input. Bring questions about meeting goals to the final review at the end of Phase 7, when the cross-source picture from Phase 3 is in hand. The collaborative review of the meeting list happens once, against the assembled prep doc, not as a mid-flow gate.
 
+*** 5-Day Look-Ahead
+
+Beyond today, scan the next 5 days from the Phase A forward window — read the calendar today *and the next five days*, reading it rather than glancing. For each meeting in that window, do a quick read (who's invited and who accepted, why it's being held, the timing, the objective) and surface three buckets at the final review:
+
+1. *Meetings that need prep.* A substantive upcoming meeting — an external partner, a negotiation, a review of specific work or data, a first call with someone — that has no =working/<slug>-call-prep/= doc yet. Offer to run the meeting-prep workflow where the project has one, or add a prep task. Some meetings take more than five minutes to prepare; catching them several days out is the whole point of looking ahead.
+2. *Traps.* A time-zone mismatch on a travel day, a double-booking, a talk-heavy meeting that will overrun into the next, a recurring meeting that isn't needed this cycle.
+3. *Focus blocks to protect.* Open mornings or afternoons in the window worth blocking now for big work, before they get booked over.
+
+This is a scan-and-flag pass, not a full prep — the deep prep for any one meeting is the meeting-prep workflow's job where one exists. Keep it to the three buckets and surface them in =* Heads-up= (Phase 7) or as forward tasks / Anchor Tasks; don't add a new prep-doc section.
+
 ** Phase 2: Planned vs. Actual Review
 
 Before setting tomorrow's priorities, review what was planned for today against what actually happened. This catches work that slipped and prevents it from silently disappearing.
@@ -239,6 +249,7 @@ Generate timestamps with =date "+%Y-%m-%d %a @ %H:%M:%S %z"= so they're accurate
 2. Add time-sensitive items (DEADLINE: or SCHEDULED: touching the day).
 3. Carry forward unfinished items surfaced by Phase 2 — but skip any item already added by step 1 or 2 above. A task that was [#A] yesterday and didn't finish gets carried forward by Phase 2 and would also re-appear in step 1's [#A] pull. Dedupe by org-mode heading text or =:ID:= property if present.
 4. Pull open =:reactive:= tasks (created by prior preps under the *Triage Action items become =:quick:reactive:= todo.org tasks* convention) — these are pending quick-fire responses that should stay visible until processed. Dedupe against steps 1-3. Surface them as thin links in Day's Priorities; Craig drops the ones that don't fit today's plan.
+5. *Pull one "big ball" — an important-but-not-urgent task to chip at today.* Surface a single Quadrant-2 task from =todo.org= (a strategic or =[#B]=-=[#C]= item that matters but keeps getting deferred because nothing makes it urgent — a spec, a vetting, an arch sweep, a piece of networking, a flashcard batch) and slate a ~15-minute chunk on it for today. The point: big important-not-urgent work only ever gets done when it's broken into small daily pieces — otherwise the urgent perpetually displaces it, which is the failure mode this whole workflow exists to fight. One per day; Craig swaps or drops it at review. Phase 4 gives it a small block.
 
 Priorities typically include:
 - Messages to send (Slack, email)
@@ -599,3 +610,6 @@ Phase 3's inline source scans — sub-steps 3b (email), 3c (mark-read), 3d (Slac
 
 *** 2026-06-01: Prep docs live in =daily-prep/= with a root =daily-prep.org= symlink — no inbox churn, no archive move
 Craig's call. The prep doc is now *born* in =daily-prep/YYYY-MM-DD-daily-prep.org= and never moves; the dated files accumulate there as both working location and archive. A single stable symlink at the project root — =daily-prep.org= — points at the current day's file, repointed each prep run with =ln -sf=. Replaces the prior model where the doc was born in =inbox/YYYY-MM-DD-daily-prep.org=, yesterday's stayed in =inbox/=, and older docs were =mv='d into the =daily-prep/= archive (old Phase 8). Consumers resolve the root symlink instead of computing a dated filename or searching =inbox/=: the Emacs opener =C-c p d= (=cj/open-project-daily-prep=, repointed from =inbox/today-prep.org= to =daily-prep.org= — handoff filed to the =.emacs.d= project 2026-06-01), next-day Phase 2, and the standup lookback (Phase A step 5, which now globs =daily-prep/= and takes the file before the symlink's target). Touchpoints updated: Phase A step 5 + slim-Phase-A step 2 (lookback), standup-only "Where the brief lands," Phase 8 (rewritten as "Repoint the Current-Day Symlink"). Cross-workflow: =triage-intake.org='s sentinel-anchor fallback dropped its =inbox/= prep-doc path. (=wrap-it-up.org= was left as-is — its =inbox/= references are about =lint-followups.org= routing, not the prep doc, so they stay correct.) Migration is one-time per project: move existing =inbox/*-daily-prep.org= into =daily-prep/= and create the root symlink at the most recent.
+
+*** 2026-06-10: Manager Tools prep additions — 5-day look-ahead, daily big-ball, decline gate
+Three additions folded in from the Manager Tools / Career Tools casts on preparing-for-your-day and meeting prep. None adds a new prep-doc section (the fixed-section rule holds — the look-ahead feeds Heads-up / Anchor Tasks). (1) *5-Day Look-Ahead* — Phase A widens the calendar fetch from the prep day to the prep day plus the next 5 days, and a new Phase 1 sub-section scans that forward window for three buckets: meetings that need prep, traps (time-zone mismatch, double-booking, overrun, an unneeded recurring meeting), and focus blocks to protect. A scan-and-flag pass, not full prep. (2) *Daily big-ball* — Phase 3 sub-step 3a item 5 pulls one important-but-not-urgent (Quadrant-2) task per day and slates a ~15-minute chunk, since strategic work only lands when broken into small daily pieces. (3) *Decline gate* — Phase 1 item 5 reframes "what Craig needs" from attending to contributing, and adds a send-regrets gate: a meeting with no objective and no contribution is a decline candidate for Craig's call at review. The look-ahead's meeting-prep references are conditional ("where the project has one") because meeting-prep is currently a project-only workflow, not a template.