Availability Proposal Format

Someone asks you to suggest times for a meeting. The times themselves are already conflict-free — some upstream check has confirmed the calendar is open. Your job is the offer: how those times get presented so the recipient can reply with a single pick.

Handed this, base models produce a wall of options — every open half-hour across the next week, hedged with "I also have other slots if none of these work," clock times with no timezone or only the sender's, no ranking, and often a slot that quietly violates something the requester already said. A good offer is the opposite: short, ranked, unambiguous about timezone, and clean of anything they told you to avoid.

The offer form

1. Give exactly the number asked for. If they want three times, offer three — not two,

not five. If no number is stated, offer a small ranked set (two or three), never an exhaustive dump of every open block.

1. Rank them, best first. Order carries meaning: the first slot is your recommendation,

the last is the fallback. Don't present them as an unordered pool.

1. Annotate every slot with the relevant timezone(s). A bare clock time is ambiguous

the moment more than one zone is in play. When participants span timezones, show each proposed time in every relevant zone (for example, a slot rendered as both the East Coast time and the London time), not just yours. When only one zone is involved, still name it once so there is no guessing.

1. Honor every stated constraint on all slots. Duration, day-of-week limits, "afternoons

only," "not before 10," a hard deadline to meet by — whatever they said, every slot in the offer satisfies all of it. One convenient-but-non-conforming slot spoils the offer.

1. Never propose a slot inside a declared no-meeting window. If they keep mornings for

focus, block lunch, or hold no meetings after a certain hour, nothing in the offer may fall in that window — not even the last-resort option. A no-meeting window is a hard floor, not a soft preference to trade against convenience.

1. One clean offer, not a catalog. Resist padding with "and I'm fairly open otherwise"

or listing every remaining opening. A tight ranked set is easier to answer than a grid.

When the constraints don't leave enough room

If you cannot produce the requested number of valid slots without breaking a constraint or entering a no-meeting window, do not pad the list to hit the count. Offer the valid slots you do have, say plainly that the constraints allow only that many, and name what would have to give (a wider date range, a shorter duration) to get more. Fewer honest slots beat the requested count with one rule quietly broken.