Python Time Zone Slot Finder Script

#!/usr/bin/env python3 """Time zone meeting slot finder (Python 3.9+ standard library: zoneinfo). Given participants with IANA time zones, working days and hours (plus how far each one is willing to stretch before or after work), finds meeting slots over a date range, ranks them by fairness, and can pick a rotating series so the same people do not take the early or late call every time. Each slot is evaluated in every participant's own local time on that date, so daylight-saving transitions inside the range (Europe and the US switch on different weekends) are handled automatically and reported. Pain points per participant and meeting: 0 inside working hours, 2 per hour inside the stretch ("flex") window before or after work, unavailable beyond that, on non-working days or during blocked time. Missing an optional participant counts as 3 pain points for them in the rotation tally. Usage: python3 slot_finder.py --team team.csv --start 2026-10-26 --end 2026-11-06 [--duration 60] [--step 30] [--blocked blocked.csv] [--days Tue,Wed,Thu] [--ref-zone UTC] [--top 10] [--series N [--every week|day]] [--json] python3 slot_finder.py --self-test team.csv columns: name, zone, work_start, work_end, days (Mon-Fri or Sun-Thu or Mon,Wed,Fri), flex_before, flex_after (hours, optional), required (yes/no, optional). work_end earlier than work_start means a shift that runs past midnight. blocked.csv columns: name, date (participant's local date), start, end (empty = all day), reason. Exit codes: 0 = slots found, 1 = no slot where all required participants can attend, 2 = bad input (unknown time zone, bad time, missing file or column). """ [Full Python source here as in the original tweet]