AI scheduling
An empty week in, a fair week out, in about the time it takes to read this line.
Scheduling is not hard because the rules are complicated. It is hard because there are forty of them and they all apply at once. CySlip holds all forty. You hold none of them.
The same week, twice
- Open last week’s spreadsheet and save a copy.
- Scroll the group chat for who said they cannot do Thursday.
- Remember that Maria has had three weekends in a row.
- Forget that Christos is on leave from Wednesday.
- Send a photo of it to the group.
- Christos replies that he is away. Fix it, send it again.
- Two people have swapped between themselves. Fix it, send it again.
- Somebody works from the photo they screenshotted on Monday.
- Find out on Wednesday morning that nobody is on the afternoon.
~2 hours spread across the week, most of it after you thought you had finished. And the gap still found you.
- Click Auto-schedule week.
- Read the coverage report and the two warnings.
- Drag one shift.
- Publish.
- Close the laptop. Your evening is still yours.
Leave is respected, weekends are spread, and the gap is named before it happens.
What it will never do
Software that writes your schedule is only worth having if you know where its limits are. These are hard limits built into the AI, not guidelines it tries to follow.
- Book someone who is on approved leaveApproved leave of any type removes the day from consideration entirely.
- Give anyone two shifts in one dayOne shift per person per day. It is designed in, not checked for afterwards.
- Drop someone below their days offYour minimum days off per week is a floor the AI is not allowed to spend.
- Put a weekend on someone who said no'Will not work weekends' excludes Saturday and Sunday outright. 'Prefers not to' is weighed instead.
- Touch a shift that already existsFixed schedules, manual assignments and earlier runs are locked. A re-run can only fill days still empty.
- Publish anythingIt writes drafts. Drafts stay invisible to staff until you publish them yourself.
What it weighs against everything else
Coverage first
Your targets per day and per department outrank everything else. Where a target cannot be met, you get an itemised shortfall rather than a quiet gap.
Fairness over six weeks, not one
Weekends and hours are balanced against a rolling six-week window, so the person who covered the last three Saturdays is not first in line for the fourth.
Contracted hours
Each person's weekly minimum and maximum, with an account default for anyone who has not set their own.
Rest and streaks
Minimum rest between shifts, and a cap on consecutive working days that counts the streak running into the week, not just inside it.
What people asked for
Availability and pending day-off requests are weighed. Availability stays soft on purpose, so someone who left it blank does not silently become unschedulable.
The same answer twice
Run it again on the same week and you get the same schedule. It is not rolling dice, so when you ask why someone got Thursday, there is an answer.
Questions
Will it do something I did not expect?
It works the way airlines roster crews: you set the rules and the targets, and it searches for the best week that satisfies all of them at once. It does not invent, guess or improvise, and it cannot break the hard rules below.
What if it cannot cover everything?
It still gives you a week, and it tells you exactly where the gaps are and why. A role with nobody eligible gets a named warning rather than an unexplained empty column.
Does it schedule my fixed-schedule staff?
No. People on a fixed schedule already have their week, so it leaves them alone and fills around them, while still counting them toward your coverage.
Can I run it again after editing?
Yes, and it is non-destructive. A re-run only fills days that are still empty; anything you assigned or edited stays exactly as you left it.
How far ahead can it schedule?
One week at a time. Multi-week runs are not supported.
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