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Skills · event-planner

run-of-show

Turn an event's agenda into a timed run of show — every session, speaker, changeover and break with its start, end, room and who's needed — and check it with a script for two things in one room at once, a speaker booked in two places, changeovers shorter than the turnaround and anything outside venue hours, drawn as a timeline per room. Use when an organiser asks for "a run of show", "a running order", "the minute-by-minute for the day", "check the agenda for clashes", or has sessions, speakers and rooms for a conference, launch, festival or wedding day.

Pack event-plannerTier standardJob Plan an eventv0.1.2

npx skilldrop-cli install run-of-show
Other ways to install

With the sibling skills it hands off to:

npx skilldrop-cli install run-of-show --with-related

The whole pack it belongs to:

npx skilldrop-cli install --pack event-planner

By hand, from a clone of the repo:

cp -R packs/event-planner/skills/run-of-show ~/.claude/skills/

In Claude Code, with the event-planner plugin installed, invoke it as:

/event-planner:run-of-show

Try it

A realistic prompt from the skill's acceptance evals:

Here's the summit agenda (agenda.md). Turn it into a run of show the crew can work from, and sort out any clashes.

What a good result looks like

Example output

Worked example: a product launch day · the skill's own worked example, source

Worked example

Input → output oracle for run-of-show. Shows an agenda that reads fine and has four clashes: a keynote's stage setup colliding with doors in the same room, two handovers shorter than the room needs, and the CEO due in the demo lab the minute her keynote ends.

Input

Here's the launch day. Auditorium 8:00–18:00, needs 20 minutes to turn over between sessions; the demo lab is 9:00–17:00, 10 minutes. It's a five-minute walk between them, and we've told people we finish at 17:00.

  • 8:30–9:00 doors and coffee, auditorium
  • 9:00–9:45 launch keynote, Mara (CEO); AV needs 30 minutes on stage before it
  • 9:45–10:30 live demo of the setup flow, demo lab, Mara and Theo
  • 10:00–11:00 customer panel, auditorium, Ines hosting; the stage takes 25 minutes to strike after
  • 11:15–12:15 lunch, auditorium
  • 13:00–15:30 hands-on lab, demo lab, Theo
  • 16:45–17:15 closing remarks, Mara

The agenda as given, checked

FAIL Auditorium: 0 min between Doors and coffee (08:30) and Launch keynote (09:00), 30 min needed for Launch keynote's setup
FAIL Auditorium: 15 min between Launch keynote (09:00) and Customer panel (10:00), 20 min needed for the room's turnaround
FAIL Auditorium: 15 min between Customer panel (10:00) and Lunch (11:15), 25 min needed for Customer panel's changeover
FAIL Mara Quinn (CEO) has 0 min to get from Auditorium to Demo lab between Launch keynote and Live demo: setup flow; the walk takes 5
WARN Auditorium is empty for 270 min between Lunch and Closing remarks
WARN Demo lab is empty for 150 min between Live demo: setup flow and Hands-on lab
WARN Closing remarks ends at 17:15, 15 min after the published end of 17:00
4 failure(s)

Each one has a small fix that moves as little as possible. Doors and coffee go to the foyer, so the stage crew has the auditorium from 8:30. The demo starts five minutes later, so Mara can walk over. The panel moves 5 minutes and lunch 15, so each handover gets the time the room needs. Closing starts 15 minutes earlier, to end on time.

The reply

No room or person is booked twice, and the day ends at 17:00 as published. Five times moved from your agenda, each by 15 minutes or less.

TimeRoomItemWho's needed
08:30–09:00FoyerDoors and coffeeFront of house
09:00–09:45AuditoriumLaunch keynoteMara, AV crew (on stage from 08:30)
09:50–10:35Demo labLive demo: setup flowMara, Theo
10:05–11:05AuditoriumCustomer panelInes, AV crew
11:30–12:30AuditoriumLunch
13:00–15:30Demo labHands-on labTheo
16:30–17:00AuditoriumClosing remarksMara

What moved, and why:

  • Doors and coffee to the foyer. The keynote stage needs 30 minutes and the room opened for coffee at 8:30.
  • Live demo to 09:50. Mara's keynote ends at 09:45, and the lab is a five-minute walk.
  • Panel to 10:05, lunch to 11:30. The auditorium needs 20 minutes between sessions, and 25 after the panel to strike the stage.
  • Closing remarks to 16:30. They ended at 17:15, after the time you've published.

Assumption: [assumption] the foyer is free from 08:00. If it isn't, the keynote moves to 09:30 instead, and everything after it moves 30 minutes.

The auditorium sits empty from 12:30 to 16:30 while the hands-on lab runs. That's fine if everyone is in the lab; if not, it's the obvious slot for a second session.

The timeline, one lane per room, is in run-of-show.svg.

Why this is the oracle

  • Setup, turnaround and changeover are checked as well as overlaps. A plain read sees no two sessions at the same time in one room, and calls the agenda clash-free.
  • People are checked across rooms, with the walk. The CEO's back-to-back across two rooms is the clash crews find on the day.
  • Each fix is the smallest move, and the reply lists them. It doesn't silently re-time the day or squeeze the stage strike to fit.

How it's checked

Admitted against plain Claude Code, on its second draft: on held-out evals written blind from its description, two judges preferred it in 2 of 4 and 3 of 4 pairs, and it met 84% of their checks, against 81% without it (RFC-0076). How skills are checked

52 assertions across 7 acceptance evals, and 7 trigger queries. Every skill's checks

What the output must do
  • Gives a running order with start, end, room and who's needed for every item, sorted by time
  • Finds that Dr. Lena Ortiz is due in Room 2 at 09:45, the minute her keynote ends, with a 5-minute walk, and moves one item to fix it
  • Finds that the keynote's 20 minutes of stage setup collides with registration if registration is on the main stage, or states where registration is
  • Finds that the main stage runs items back to back with less than its 15-minute turnaround (the break after the panel, the talk after the break, lunch, and the lightning talks), and re-times them
  • Finds that closing at 16:45 for 60 minutes runs past the published 17:30 finish
  • Lists every change it made, and why
  • Saves a timeline drawing under a plain name and names it
  • Does not mention scripts, JSON or the skill's own files in the reply
  • Finds that June Park is booked in Hall A's investor update and Hall B's roadmap deep dive at once, from 10:15 to 10:30
  • Does not report the 11:30 Q&A as a clash: Mo Reyes and June Park are both free by then
  • Notes that Hall A runs straight from one item into the next at 09:30, 10:30 and 10:40 with no changeover, and says the room needs time or states the turnaround it assumed
  • Gives one fix per clash that moves as little as possible
  • Does not hand back a rewritten schedule
  • Does not invent rooms, people or venue hours not in the file
  • Makes every part of the day an item with a start and end, including drinks, speeches and cake
  • Gives the band its hour of setup and soundcheck in the barn before 19:30, while dinner is in the same room, and flags that as a clash or resolves it
  • Keeps everything in the barn within its 23:30 close
  • States the assumptions it made (turnaround, durations it had to guess), tagged
  • Leads with the running order as a table
  • Does not invent suppliers, names or times not implied by the notes
  • Writes the run of show, runs the run-of-show check script on it, and shows it only after a run with no failures, with a timeline per room (Main Hall, Birch Room, Cedar Room, Workshop Lab)
  • Schedules all 24 sessions from the export exactly once, each with its start, end, room and who is needed (speakers or chair plus that room's AV tech), at the length given in the export
  • Keeps the fixed parts of the day: opening keynote 09:00-09:45 and closing keynote 17:00-17:45 in the Main Hall with nothing else running, nothing in any room during lunch (12:30-13:30) or the afternoon break (15:15-15:35), and everything inside the 08:00-18:30 venue hours
  • Never has two things in one room at once, and leaves at least each room's turnaround between sessions (Main Hall 15 min, Birch and Cedar 10 min, Workshop Lab 20 min)
  • Never has anyone in two places at once, with at least 10 minutes between a person's sessions in different rooms: Ines Varga (FW-09, FW-22 and the FW-03 panel), Hollis Grant (both panels), Sven Aaltonen and Priti Raman (their talks and the FW-23 workshop), and the other speakers with two sessions
  • Honours speaker availability: the FW-03 panel and FW-12 (Kofi Mensah-Baird) start at or after 12:15, FW-04 and the FW-06 panel (Lena Ostrowski) end by 14:30, FW-13 (Odile Fournier) starts at 11:00 or later, and FW-14 (Jarrah Whitcombe) ends by 16:00
  • Puts each session in a room that suits its request and fits its expected attendance: Main Hall requests in the Main Hall, the three workshops in the Workshop Lab, and FW-09 (72), FW-11 (66) and FW-17 (63) in the Birch Room, not the 60-seat Cedar Room
  • Does not invent sessions, speakers, crew or breaks that are not in the export or the venue notes
  • Runs the run-of-show check script on the runsheet as supplied and reports what it fails before changing anything
  • Finds the Coach House booked twice at once: Groom prep photos 12:15-12:45 overlaps the Caterer staff briefing 12:30-13:00
  • Finds Wren (photographer) booked in two places: Couple portraits in the Orchard 16:15-16:45 and Family group photos on the Front Lawn 16:30-17:00
  • Finds the Barn turnaround after the ceremony too short: the ceremony ends 15:45 and guests are called back to their seats at 17:00 (75 minutes, and the flip row itself allows only 60) against the venue's 90-minute minimum
  • Finds Band set 3 (23:00-23:45) runs past the 23:00 amplified-music limit, and shows it can't be fixed by moving things: with the 15:00 ceremony, 90-minute flip, 15-minute call to seats, 2-hour meal, 45-minute speeches after the meal, 45-minute dance-floor flip and 10-minute first dance, the band can't start before about 21:10, leaving about 110 minutes, room for two 45-minute sets and one break but not three
  • Puts the band problem to the couple as their decision (for example two sets, shorter sets agreed with the band, or speeches moved), and does not leave a set running past 23:00 or cut any venue turnaround below its minimum
  • Does not flag correct entries as errors: the 45-minute dance-floor flip (20:00-20:45) meets the venue minimum, and the Orchard, Front Lawn and Terrace need no turnaround
  • Does not invent suppliers, times or permissions that are not in the runsheet or the notes, such as a later music licence or a band agreement to shorter sets
  • Schedules all 25 items in the booker's list once each, in their booked rooms and at their booked lengths (7 in the Main Hall, 9 in the Studio, 5 in the Library Room, 4 on the Courtyard Stage), each with a start, an end and who's needed
  • No two items overlap in one room, and every changeover is at least the room's turnaround: 30 min in the Main Hall, 15 in the Studio and on the Courtyard Stage, 10 in the Library Room
  • Everything sits inside room hours: nothing in the Main Hall before 14:00 and nothing after the 23:00 curfew, the Library Room finished by 17:30, the Courtyard Stage within 12:00-15:30, and the Studio within 11:30-22:00 with the Sea Fret film last
  • Keeps the fixed points: The Marrowbone Few on at 21:30 (so 21:30-22:45), Storytime with Mabel Quist at 12:00-12:45, the Folk Radio Kettleby broadcast at 18:00-19:00, Hazel & the Hum off by 19:00 and Ollie Brandt done by 14:30
  • No one is booked in two places: Tamsin Ellery (Corvid Lane and her solo set), Dev Ashraf (hosting the slam and his Courtyard set), Juniper Strand (Studio set and Library workshop) and Ruth Penhaligon, the BSL interpreter (Writing the Land, the poetry slam, Kit Harrow), each have at least 15 minutes between rooms
  • Notes how tight three rooms are: the Library Room (325 of 330 minutes with changeovers), the Courtyard Stage (205 of 210) and the Main Hall before the headliner (415 of the 420 minutes from 14:00 to 21:00) each have only 5 minutes to spare, so they have to run back to back from opening
  • Delivers a run sheet per room with start, end, item and who's needed (performers, that room's crew, and Ruth where a session is BSL interpreted), plus a timeline drawn for each room
  • Does not invent acts, crew, a second interpreter, extra rooms or different set lengths that are not in the input
  • Flags that the Developer breakout (11:00-11:45) and the Retail partners briefing (11:30-12:15) are both in Studio B at once, and moves the briefing so neither speaker clashes (for example to 11:55-12:40, after the 10-min turnaround and before lunch)
  • Flags that Imran Kestrel is down for the keynote in the Hall (10:00-10:40) and the Tech Weekly interview in the Green Room (10:30-10:50) at once, and moves the interview to a free Green Room slot at least 10 minutes after he leaves the Hall
  • Flags that the Hall has only 10 minutes between the keynote (ends 10:40) and the Product demo (10:50) against the 20-min reset, and moves the demo to 11:00-11:40, which still leaves 20 minutes before the 12:00 panel and 10 minutes before Ana Ruiz's 11:50 interview
  • Flags that Closing & customer awards (17:45-18:45) runs past the 18:00 deadline for clearing the Hall, and explains that moving things can't fix it: after the fixed livestream the Hall needs 225 minutes (three sessions and three 20-min resets) but only 180 are left, the morning is full once the demo moves (125 of 125 minutes between the keynote and lunch), lunch and the livestream are fixed, and Studio B seats only 80. So about 45 minutes have to be cut, and that goes on the list of decisions
  • Does not quietly shorten or drop a session in the returned sheet to make the Hall fit; any cut is put to the user as a choice
  • Raises no false alarms: the 20-min Hall resets in the afternoon, the 5-min Green Room turnarounds (15:35 to 15:40, 16:00 to 16:05), the Studio B 15-min gaps and Imran's 15:15 interview after the livestream are not reported as problems
  • Returns runsheet_draft_v4.csv in the same columns with the changed rows marked, plus a short list of decisions
  • Does not invent speakers, rooms, crew or new fixed times that are not in the input
When it should and shouldn't activate

Should activate:

  • put together a run of show for the conference, two rooms, here are the sessions
  • I need the minute-by-minute for the launch event
  • check this agenda for speaker clashes
  • make a running order for the festival main stage

Should leave to another skill:

  • seat the dinner guests, keep the two CEOs apart
  • plan the phases and rollback for our product launch
  • write the release notes for the launch

Hands off to

Source

SKILL.md · the whole folder on GitHub.