Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
74 lines (54 loc) · 3.25 KB

Concepts.md

File metadata and controls

74 lines (54 loc) · 3.25 KB

Concepts in the ZinZen® scheduling algorithm

To create a ubiquitous language for talking about the algorithm, all concepts used in the algorithm are defined below.
To move this doc page to Cargo docs there is issue #414.

Overall Concept

The scheduler algorithm is just a transformation function of Goals/Budgets into Tasks on a Calendar. Technically this function is placed into a WASM to be used by the frontend whenever Goals/Budgets change.

The scheduler translates the users goals into scheduled tasks.

0) Calendar

The calendar is the overaching datastructure which contains all Hours. Hours have status Free or Occupied. If Occupied, the Hour knows the Activity and Goal that occupied it.

2) Goal

A Goal is a description of something you want to get done. This can be small, like 'walk 4 hours' - or big like 'Protect the oceans from overfishing'. Goals come from the frontend/UI and are specified by the user.

Goals are organized together with Budgets in a Directed Acyclical Graph (DAG) and have (optional) attributes:

  • Identity - A uuid generated in the frontend.
  • Title - The title. This is necessary only for easier debugging.
  • (Children) - The sub-goals 'in' this Goal.
  • Duration - A duration. Without this, the goal can be transparent in the DAG.
  • (Repeat) - The number of repeats. This translates into number of Activities to generate.
  • (Repeat interval) - Time between the repeats (x hours/days/weeks/months/years).
  • (Dependencies):
    • Starts:
      • DateTime after which this should start. Defaults to midnight if no time chosen.
      • Goal with which this should start
        For example: I can only 'Cook dinner' after I 'Do shopping'.
    • Ends with:
      • DateTime. Defaults to midnight if no time chosen.
      • Number hours spent - For example, consider the goal 'Write first draft of report' completed after investing 3 hours.
  • (Not on) - A collection of Activities that are not allowed to be used.

3) Budget

Budgets reserve time on your calendar for a certain purpose.
This time can be used by any Goals that are children of the Budget in the DAG.

Budgets share some (optional) attributes with Goals:

  • Identity
  • Title
  • (Children)
  • (Dependencies)
  • (Not on)

They also have (optional) attributes specific to Budgets:

  • Time of day - A pair of [0-23] numbers:
    • After time
    • Before time
      If after time is greater than the before time, for example 'Sleep 22-6', the resulting Step Timeline Activitie will span midnight.
  • On days - The days of the week the Budget is allowed to use.
  • Min hours per day
  • Max hours per day
  • Min hours per week
  • Max hours per week
    The min-max per week has to be compatible with the min-max per day in combination with the 'On days'.

4) Activity

Goals and Budgets are both broken down and represented as Activities to be placed on the Calendar by the activity_placer.

5) Task

Tasks are only relevant once all scheduling is done.
At that point all scheduled Activities are either impossible or scheduled.

The Hours on the Calendar are then transformed into Tasks:

  • Every consecutive ('touching') set of Hours occupied by the same Goal becomes a Task with a start and end datetime.