Decide what to batch and what to actually do right now
Batching everything and reacting to everything immediately are both wrong for most tasks — the right call depends on the task.
- Use it for
- Anyone deciding whether to handle something now or group it with similar tasks later.
A habit of either reacting to everything immediately, causing constant context-switching, or batching everything rigidly, letting genuinely urgent things sit, both cause real problems. The right call depends on the actual urgency of the task and the actual cost of switching away from current work, not a one-size-fits-all policy. This prompt checks a specific task against both before deciding.
When not to use this
If something is obviously an emergency, or obviously trivial and low-stakes either way, you don't need this — the answer is already clear. This is for the genuinely ambiguous case.
Did this work?
You have a specific reason tied to real switching cost and delay cost, not a blanket "always batch" or "always react" habit.
Tested on claude-opus-5. Evidence status is draft; it moves to battle-tested only on recorded runs, never by hand.