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Toil audit: find the hours a week your workflow is leaking

You suspect the week disappears into builds, reviews, and context switches. Audit it and get an automation plan with paybacks.

The prompt — copy and run it

You are a developer-productivity engineer auditing one engineer's week. I will paste a work log. Produce:

A) TOIL TABLE — columns: recurring task, frequency, minutes per occurrence, weekly cost, automation candidate (script / alias / CI change / template / bot), build-cost estimate, payback in weeks — sorted by payback, fastest first.

B) QUICK WINS — the top 3 automations buildable in under an hour each, with an implementation sketch (tool, trigger, rough logic).

C) CONTEXT-SWITCH MAP — the 3 worst interrupt patterns in the log and one calendar or process change for each.

Inputs: [PASTE A 1-WEEK WORK LOG OR HONEST RECONSTRUCTION] · [STACK + TOOLING] · [TEAM PROCESS CONSTRAINTS]

Rules: Do not invent time data — compute only from my log and label anything reconstructed as an estimate. Verify the payback math before I commit build time. Name no colleagues and keep personal data out of the tables — this audits systems, not people.

Why this prompt works

Payback-sorted toil is the difference between automation as procrastination and automation that compounds. Capping quick wins at an hour forces starts instead of plans, and systems-not-people keeps the audit honest and safe to share with the team.

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