calblock

Automatically blocks remaining free time in your Microsoft 365 calendar when it drops below a configurable threshold. Helps ensure you always have dedicated "silent work" time for focused, uninterrupted work.

Features

• Automatic blocking: Monitors your calendar and creates "Silent work" blocks when free time drops below threshold
• Configurable work hours: Define your working day (e.g., 8:00-18:00)
• Smart event filtering: Only blocks based on accepted meetings and busy/tentative events
• Existing silent work detection: Accounts for already-blocked time
• Focus reminders: Optional daily reminders (e.g., "Check in on XZY" on Mondays)
• Multiple-day processing: Can process today or multiple days ahead

Installation

This tool requires M365-Auth for OAuth2 authentication. If you don't have pipx, see the M365-Auth installation guide.

# Install both packages
pipx install m365auth
pipx install calblock

# Set up authentication
get-token --profile calendar

Configuration

On first run, calblock creates a default configuration file at ~/.config/calblock/config.yaml:

auth:
  profile: calendar  # M365 auth profile to use

calendar:
  api_base_url: https://graph.microsoft.com/beta
  timezone: Europe/London
  work_hours:
    start: 8
    end: 18
  min_free_hours: 2.0  # Minimum free + silent work time
  process_days:
    - 0  # Monday
    - 1  # Tuesday
    - 2  # Wednesday
    - 3  # Thursday
    - 4  # Friday
  silent_work_identifier: Silent work

focus_reminders:
  0: Check Project A    # Monday
  4: Check Project B    # Friday

Edit this file to customize:

• work_hours: Your typical working hours
• min_free_hours: Minimum combined free + silent work time (hours)
• process_days: Which days to process (0=Monday, 6=Sunday)
• timezone: Your timezone name
  • Examples: Europe/London (GMT/BST), America/New_York (EST/EDT), Asia/Tokyo, UTC
  • Full list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tz_database_time_zones
• silent_work_identifier: Title for blocking events
• focus_reminders: Optional day-specific reminders

Usage

# Process today (default)
calblock

# Process next 5 days
calblock --days 5

# Process specific date
calblock --date 2025-10-15

# Verbose mode (shows detailed calculations)
calblock -v

# Custom config file
calblock --config ~/my-config.yaml

How It Works

1. Fetch events: Retrieves your calendar events for the specified date
2. Calculate free time:
   • Identifies busy periods (accepted meetings, busy/tentative events)
   • Calculates free slots within work hours
   • Accounts for existing "Silent work" blocks
3. Check threshold: If free time + existing silent work ≤ min_free_hours
4. Create blocks: Fills free slots with "Silent work" events until threshold is met

Event Filtering

The blocker intelligently filters events:

• Included: Accepted meetings, busy events, tentative events, out-of-office
• Excluded: Declined/not-responded invitations, "free" status, "working elsewhere"

This ensures you don't over-block based on tentative or unconfirmed time.

Example Output

2025-10-13: 1.5h free + 0.5h silent = 2.0h total
✅ No blocking needed

2025-10-14: 0.5h free + 0.0h silent = 0.5h total
Created: Silent work (Check in on research project) 14:00-15:30 (90min)
✅ Blocked 1 slots

2025-10-15: 3.0h free + 0.0h silent = 3.0h total
✅ No blocking needed

Scheduling

Run automatically via cron:

# Add to crontab (crontab -e)
# Run at 7am every weekday, check next 2 days
0 7 * * 1-5 /Users/yourusername/.local/bin/calblock --days 2

Authentication

calblock uses the calendar profile from M365-Auth. Ensure you've run:

get-token --profile calendar

The OAuth refresh token is stored securely in your system keychain and automatically refreshed as needed.

Troubleshooting

"Error: m365auth module not found"

• Install M365-Auth: https://github.com/sbfnk/M365-Auth#installation

"No refresh token found"

• Run: get-token --profile calendar

"Events not being filtered correctly"

• Use --verbose mode to see detailed event processing
• Check the showAs status and response status of events

"Wrong timezone"

• Set the correct timezone name in config.yaml (e.g., timezone: America/New_York)
• Use --verbose to see how times are being interpreted

License

MIT License

Credits

Built with M365-Auth for OAuth2 authentication.