How Prio now protects your focus time and auto-schedules your tasks

The number one complaint from founders using calendar tools: meetings eat their deep work time, and tasks without a calendar block never get done.

Today we're shipping four features that fix both problems.

Focus time protection

You can now tell Prio to protect your deep work hours. Say something like "set up 4 hours of focus time every morning, Monday through Friday" and Prio creates a scheduling rule that guards those blocks.

Two protection levels:

• Soft protection warns you when a new meeting would eat into focus time. You'll see exactly how many focus hours you've hit this week versus your goal.
• Hard protection blocks the event entirely. No meeting gets created during protected focus time without you explicitly overriding it.

This isn't just a calendar feature. It integrates with the scheduling validation engine. Every calendar event — whether created by you, by the AI, or through an approval workflow — runs through the same check. If it conflicts with your focus time, you'll know before it's on your calendar.

How it works under the hood

When you set up focus time, Prio creates a scheduling rule with your preferred time windows and weekly hour goal. Every time a calendar event is proposed:

1. The system checks if it overlaps with any configured focus time slot
2. If it does, it calculates your current week's achievement (e.g., "12h of 16h goal")
3. Depending on your protection level, it either blocks or warns with full context

You can also ask Prio "how's my focus time this week" at any point to get a status report.

Creating focus blocks

Say "schedule my focus time for next week" and Prio will:

1. Load your focus time preferences
2. Check your calendar for conflicts
3. Find available slots that match your preferred windows
4. Create calendar events for each block, up to your weekly goal

Each block goes through the normal approval queue, so you stay in control.

Auto-scheduling tasks

Tasks with a time estimate can now be automatically placed on your calendar. When you create a task, include an estimate: "create a task to write the investor update, due Friday, about 90 minutes."

Then say "find time for my tasks on my calendar" and Prio will:

1. Sort your tasks by urgency and deadline proximity
2. Map your free time across the next few working days
3. Slot each task into the best available window
4. Prefer focus time blocks for high-priority and urgent tasks
5. Respect all your scheduling rules (avoid windows, preferred times, buffers)

Each proposed calendar block shows up in your approval queue with the reasoning: "Scheduled for Tuesday 9-11am — longest open focus block before Friday deadline."

This closes the gap between your task list and your calendar. Tasks that exist only as list items tend to get deferred. Tasks that have a calendar block get done.

Smart meeting buffers

You've always been able to set travel buffers between locations. Now you can set general meeting buffers:

• Default buffer: minimum gap between any two meetings (e.g., 10 minutes)
• External meeting buffer: extra breathing room after meetings with outside attendees
• Max consecutive meetings: force a break after N back-to-back meetings

These checks run automatically when any calendar event is created. If you try to schedule something 5 minutes after another meeting and your buffer rule says 15 minutes, you'll see a warning with the exact gap.

The consecutive meeting limit is especially useful. If you set a max of 3, Prio will flag when a proposed meeting would be your 4th in a row without a break.

Priority inference

When you create a task and don't explicitly set a priority, Prio now infers one based on available signals:

• Deadline proximity: overdue or due today gets urgent, within 2 days gets high
• Keywords: "asap", "critical", "deadline" boost priority. "Nice to have", "no rush" lower it
• Contact importance: tasks from VIP contacts (which you can now mark) get boosted

You'll always see the reasoning: "Priority: high (inferred: due in 2 days, VIP sender)". Prio never silently overrides — the inference is transparent.

Speaking of VIP contacts: you can now mark any contact with an importance level (VIP, high, normal, low). Say "mark Sarah as VIP" and it applies across all scheduling and priority decisions.

Weekly review gets smarter

The Friday calendar audit now includes focus time analysis. If you're under your weekly goal, you'll see exactly how many hours short you are and how many open focus slots remain.

The audit tool in chat also reports this when you ask "audit my calendar" — so you don't have to wait until Friday to check.

Getting started

All of these features work through the same chat interface you already use:

• "Set up 16 hours of focus time per week, mornings 9-12"
• "Schedule my focus time for next week"
• "Find time for my tasks on the calendar"
• "How's my focus time this week?"
• "Mark Alex as VIP"

No new UI to learn. No settings to configure. Just tell Prio what you need.

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These features are available now on all plans. Try Prio free.