The week board¶

Next cycle is where a round of pairings takes shape. Every round belongs to a week keyed to a Monday; the arrows at the top step between weeks along your cadence, and History lists them all.

The board fills the page, and everything that changes the week's state lives in the panel on the right (on a phone it sits above the board): Build — generating and reshuffling — and, once groups exist, Commit — finalizing, locking, sending, or discarding. The panel stays in reach however long the board gets.

A week is always in one of four states, shown under the date:

State	Meaning
`Not generated`	No groups yet — the page tells you how many people are eligible.
`Draft`	Groups exist and can be edited, regenerated, or discarded freely.
`Locked`	Counts as history, but the announcement hasn't been emailed yet.
`Sent`	Finalized and emailed. The board is read-only unless you reopen it.

Generating¶

Generate pairings builds the groups: pairs, plus exactly one trio when the eligible count is odd. The matcher avoids repeats two ways — anyone paired in the last month is off-limits entirely, and anyone paired in the last 12 weeks costs more the fresher the meeting was. Only when the roster leaves no acceptable arrangement does it allow a repeat, and then it picks the least-recent one and tells you in an amber banner rather than failing.

Each button in the Build panel means one thing, always:

Generate pairings / Regenerate — the standard matcher. Deterministic: the same roster and week give the same groups, so pressing it twice changes nothing.
Reshuffle — same rules, different random arrangement.
Generate with AI — (only when the server has AI pairing configured) asks Claude to arrange the groups, following your standing instructions ("mix the departments", "pair newcomers with old hands"). It never sees names or email addresses, recent-pairing history is still respected, and if it's unavailable or proposes a poor arrangement the standard matcher steps in automatically. This is the only button that uses AI — Generate, Regenerate, and Reshuffle never do. On an odd roster it makes a trio like the standard matcher, unless your instructions say no groups of three — then one person sits the week out instead and the flash names them.

A draft you'd rather not keep can be thrown away with Discard draft in the Commit panel — the groups and any custom wording for that week are gone, and the week returns to Not generated.

Regenerating discards hand edits

If you've moved people by hand, Generate/Reshuffle asks first — a rebuilt board starts over. Held-out people stay held out, though.

Discarding isn't skipping

If automatic sending is on, a discarded week is simply regenerated from scratch and emailed at the scheduled moment — the confirm dialog reminds you. To skip a week entirely, turn automatic sending off first.

Reading the board¶

Groups render as numbered cards; each member chip shows name and email. Tags flag anything unusual: trio, a hand-made group of 4+ (amber), someone left on their own (amber), or a chip marked paused / has left.

Above the board, banners call out what needs attention:

Repeat pairings this week (amber) — who met recently and when ("Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper met 3 weeks ago"), whether the matcher was forced into it or you paired them by hand.
People in a group who shouldn't be (red) — someone paused or left after generation. They're already excluded from the copyable address list, but the groups still show them: regenerate, or move them out by hand.
Off-cadence week — you're looking at a week between planned cycles. You can still generate here as a one-off.

Editing by hand¶

The board works on a simple gesture: click someone to pick them up, then click where they should go.

Click a second person → they swap places (both group sizes stay intact).
Click a group's move here button → they move into that group.
While someone is selected, an action bar offers Own group (start a new group with just them), Hold out (exclude them from this week), and Cancel. Esc also cancels.

Hand edits are checked against history too — put two people together who had coffee three weeks ago and the repeat banner says so. And after every edit the page comes back exactly where you left it, so working through a long board doesn't mean scrolling back down each time.

Below the board, three side lists appear when they have anyone in them:

Not in a group — eligible but unplaced: people who accepted after generation, or someone the AI matcher gave the week off on your instructions. Click to place them, or regenerate.
Held out by you — excluded on purpose, with a Bring back button. Holding out survives regeneration; it's the right tool for "skip Ada just this once" (for longer absences, pause them from the roster).
Excluded automatically — out of this week by a pause or a slower personal cadence, with the reason shown ("paired every 4 weeks — last on Jan 6, due again Feb 3").

When the groups look right¶

The Commit panel does the sending — and The email section below the board holds the wording and the copy-paste composer. Both are covered in Sending the email.

History¶

History lists every week — its status (Sent / Locked / Draft / Not generated), group and people counts, and the last change (shown in your workspace timezone) — with Plan the next cycle jumping to the next planned week. Every locked or sent cycle counts toward repeat-avoidance, whether or not it was emailed.