Remind

Reminds the user of commitments they already know — meetings, deadlines, bills, promises, follow-ups — at the right lead time, in their style. Use when the user says remind me, nudge me, ping me, or don't let me forget, mentions a deadline, appointment, flight, renewal, birthday, or a promise they made, wants a recurring reminder, snoozes or reschedules one, needs to chase something a colleague promised, or reacts to reminder timing (too early, too late, I forgot). Not for announcing new information the user doesn't know yet (alerting) or executing tasks on a schedule.

User preferences, learned lead times, and the active reminder list live in ~/Clawic/data/remind/ (see setup.md on first use, memory-template.md for file formats). If you have data at an old location (~/remind/, ~/clawic/remind/, or preferences stored inside this file's sections), move it to ~/Clawic/data/remind/.

When To Use

Remind = "Just a reminder that..." — surfacing something the human already knows, at the moment it becomes actionable.

• Planned events, deadlines, and commitments they set themselves
• Promises they made to other people — and other people's promises they must chase
• Recurring obligations easy to lose track of: taxes, renewals, bills, reviews
• Things they told you they were afraid to forget
• Not for new information (news, outages, price moves — that is alerting) and not for executing tasks on a schedule (that is scheduling)

The litmus test: could they have written it in their own calendar? Then it's a reminder. Did the world just change? That's an alert. If "just a reminder that..." reads unnaturally in front of the message, don't send it as one.

Quick Reference

Situation	Play
"Remind me to X at/in Y"	Create exactly as stated; explicit override beats every learned preference and default
"Don't let me forget X"	Create with an extra earlier stage — the phrase signals stakes, not timing (timing.md, Adjustment Factors)
Commitment mentioned, no ask ("I'll send it Friday")	First 2 in a category: offer ("Want a nudge Friday morning?"); after 2 acceptances, create silently (triggers.md)
Recurring obligation (taxes, renewals, dentist)	recurring.md — cadence defaults, anchor drift, end conditions
"Later" / "not now" / no reaction to a reminder	followup.md — snooze, silence, re-ping rules
Reaction to a past reminder ("too early", "I forgot")	learning.md maps the phrase to a signal; adjust via the ladder in timing.md
They acknowledged the reminder	Done — no repeat unless the entry is under Always (followup.md)
Window missed (offline, late detection, quiet hours)	followup.md late delivery — lead with what is still possible
Several reminders due at once	Stack up to 3 in one message, hard deadlines first; more → digest (phrasing.md)
Default: unsure if remindable	High stakes → create and say so; low stakes → skip and watch what happens

Depth on demand: triggers.md what qualifies · timing.md lead times, ladder, quiet hours, timezones · phrasing.md writing the message · recurring.md repeating obligations · followup.md after it fires: acks, snooze, escalation, misses · learning.md reactions → preferences · setup.md first use · memory-template.md storage formats.

Core Rules

1. Only remind about what they already know. New information is an alert; the litmus test above decides. Misclassifying erodes trust in both channels.
2. Explicit beats learned beats default. "Remind me at 3pm" overrides every stored preference; a stored preference overrides timing.md; the defaults catch the rest. A one-off override never rewrites the category preference (learning.md).
3. The loop: detect → evaluate → remind → observe → confirm → store. Detect (triggers.md), evaluate against ~/Clawic/data/remind/preferences.md, remind while they can still act, observe the reaction, confirm before storing.
4. Signal ladder (canonical — every other file points here): explicit instruction → store (confirmed) immediately · 2 consistent observed reactions → store (pattern), propose the change · accepted proposal, or a 3rd consistent reaction → upgrade to (confirmed) · 1 contradicting reaction on a (confirmed) entry → downgrade to (pattern), re-observe.
5. Remind while acting is still possible. Lead counts back from when the action must start, not from the event: remind at = event time − process − transition − prep (worked example in timing.md).
6. One acknowledgment = done. Repeats read as nagging; Always entries are the only exception, and silence is not an acknowledgment (followup.md).
7. Never store without comment. Wrong guesses compound invisibly; propose in one line before writing anything (confirmed).
8. A working system sends fewer reminders each month, not more. Correct Skips are wins; let reactions promote categories, never your own eagerness.

Reminder Components

• What — the commitment, phrased as the action, not the event: "Leave by 2:15 for the 5pm flight", never "Flight at 5pm". If the reminder arrives when the action is no longer possible, the timing was wrong regardless of the event time.
• When — lead time before the action must start (timing.md)
• How — tone, length, and stage wording (phrasing.md); default: one line, what + when + the single next step

Output Gates

Run before every reminder goes out:

• Do they already know this? (No → it's an alert, not a reminder)
• Can they still act on it after this arrives? (No → apply followup.md late delivery; log the missed lead)
• Has this exact reminder — this occurrence, for recurring — been acknowledged? (Yes → drop unless in Always)
• Does a Skip entry, a stated exclusion, or quiet_hours cover it? (timing.md)
• Is it phrased as the action, not the event, with wording distinct from the previous stage? (phrasing.md)

Configuration

User-dependent variables. Defaults apply until the user states a preference; store them in ~/Clawic/data/remind/config.yaml.

Variable	Type	Default	Effect
quiet_hours	text (HH:MM–HH:MM local)	22:00–07:00	Suppresses delivery inside the window unless the action itself must start there (timing.md, Time-of-Day Rules)
morning_slot	text (HH:MM–HH:MM local)	07:00–08:00	Where morning-of, daily-habit, and "tomorrow morning" reminders land
digest_slot	text (HH:MM)	none	When set, low-priority reminders batch into one daily digest at this time instead of arriving one by one (phrasing.md)
lead_bias	earlier | standard | later	standard	Shifts the default lead of every unlearned category one ladder step in that direction; learned preferences are untouched

Preference areas — customizable dimensions; a stated preference gets recorded in config.yaml and applied:

• Delivery & tone — register (casual/formal), length, emoji, language of reminders — affects phrasing.md defaults
• Proactivity — appetite for unprompted reminders from implicit detection — affects the offer-first rule in triggers.md
• Schedule shape — workday start/end, weekend policy for work items — affects Time-of-Day Rules in timing.md
• Exclusions — topics, projects, or blocks (focus time, meetings) where reminders never fire — feeds Skip and the Output Gates
• Adjacent systems — calendars or task apps already alerting them — categories those cover default to Skip (their alarm plus yours = double nag)

Per-category lead times are learned data, not config: they live in ~/Clawic/data/remind/preferences.md (memory-template.md for the format).

Traps

Trap	Why it fails	Do instead
Reminding about everything detected	Fatigue: they tune out, and the one critical reminder dies with the noise	Skip low stakes by default; let reactions promote categories
Reminding at event time	Awareness without agency — nothing left to do but feel bad	Lead counts back from when the action starts (timing.md formula)
Repeating after an acknowledgment	Reads as nagging; erodes the trust the whole skill runs on	One ack = done; Always is the only exception (followup.md)
Treating "thanks" as "send more"	Politeness is not preference	Only timing words and actual misses move the ladder (learning.md)
Storing preferences silently	Wrong guesses compound invisibly; they can't correct what they can't see	Propose in one line before writing anything (confirmed)
Stretching lead time after one miss	One miss may be a bad day; overcorrection breeds "too early" complaints	Move one ladder step per 2 signals, never multiply
Same wording on every stage	Identical repeats read as a stuck bot, and get filtered like one	Each stage carries a different action verb (phrasing.md)
"You missed X" with nothing to do	Guilt without agency; the worst message this skill can send	Deliver a miss only when a recovery action exists, and lead with it (followup.md)

Related Skills

More Clawic skills, get them at https://clawic.com/skills/remind (install if the user confirms):

• alerts - New or urgent events they don't know about yet
• notify - Delivery mechanics: channels, batching, fatigue control
• schedule - Executing recurring tasks, not recalling them
• memory - Long-term storage beyond reminder preferences

Feedback

• If useful, star it: https://clawic.com/skills/remind
• Latest version: https://clawic.com/skills/remind

Part of Clawic, the verified skill library. Get this skill: https://clawic.com/skills/remind.