Mena cultural calendar

MENA Cultural Calendar

When To Use

Use this skill for country-specific calendar planning, holiday source checks, campaign timing, support staffing assumptions, and cultural-sensitivity review across Arab/MENA markets.

When Not To Use

• Do not send messages, launch paid campaigns, publish public content, or change production schedules without explicit approval.
• Do not present estimated Hijri or library-derived dates as confirmed.
• Do not invent religious rulings, government closures, school dates, salary behavior, shopping seasons, endpoint URLs, credentials, or compliance claims.

Required Context

• Country or market.
• Event, season, or date range.
• Year and timezone.
• Sector scope: government, private sector, bank, exchange, school, retail, logistics, support, or campaign.
• Intended use: planning, staffing, public copy, paid media, outbound, or product calendar.

Common Workflows

• Classify each date as fixed, official announced, official confirmed, estimated, library estimated, sector only, retailer led, or unknown.
• Build calendar plans for Ramadan, Eid al-Fitr, Eid al-Adha, Hajj, national days, back-to-school, shopping seasons, and support operations.
• Review cultural, religious, national-symbol, minors, salary, and direct-marketing risks.
• Produce refresh rules and source-check tasks before launch.

Default Workflow

1. Read sources.yml and the relevant event reference.
2. Capture country, year, sector scope, intended use, and channel before making a calendar claim.
3. Mark future lunar/Hijri dates as estimated until country-specific official confirmation.
4. Record source URL, source scope, confidence, last checked date, and refresh date.
5. Mark unsupported facts as Unknown from public docs.
6. Prepare plans only; require explicit approval before publish, send, launch, or production schedule changes.

Decision Tree

• Ramadan: read references/ramadan.md and references/calendar-refresh-rules.md.
• Eid al-Fitr or Eid al-Adha: read the matching Eid reference and official country source.
• Hajj: read references/hajj.md and use Saudi official sources for timing.
• National days: read references/national-days.md.
• Source selection or refresh cadence: read references/holiday-data-sources.md and references/calendar-refresh-rules.md.

Response Contract

• Start by naming skills/mena-cultural-calendar/SKILL.md and the reference files used.
• Separate source-backed dates from estimated dates, sector-only dates, hypotheses, and unknowns.
• Include date basis, source scope, confidence, last checked date, and refresh-by date.
• Include native/expert review gates for religious, national-symbol, political, minors, salary, paid, outbound, or regulated uses.
• Never provide live-action instructions that publish, send, launch, upload audiences, move money, alter production schedules, or use customer data without explicit human approval.

Source And Confidence Rules

• High-confidence claims require public sources or completed review evidence.
• Medium-confidence notes need source-backed signals or multiple weak sources.
• Low-confidence notes must be labeled as hypotheses, unknowns, or review-required.
• Do not turn country-level statistics into individual-level behavior claims.

Anti-Stereotype Rules

• Never assign traits to nationality, religion, ethnicity, dialect group, gender, age, or income group.
• Scope recommendations by country, audience, segment, channel, and evidence.
• Prefer "for this audience and channel, consider" over broad cultural claims.

Output Rules

• Give practical drafts, plans, templates, checklists, or QA steps.
• Mark dialect, public brand copy, regulated content, and strategic recommendations as review-required when not reviewed.
• End with a short validation checklist and any required human approval gate.

Files To Read

• Routing and process: SKILL.md.
• Source map: sources.yml.
• Topic references: references/*.md.
• Example plan: examples/calendar-plan.md.
• Compatibility example: examples/source-backed-answer.md.
• Deterministic helpers: scripts/build_calendar_data.js, scripts/mark_estimated_hijri_dates.js.

Safety Rules

• Label calendar certainty: estimated vs official confirmed is mandatory.
• Use sandbox/test workflows before production schedule automation.
• Protect customer data, survey data, secrets, credentials, and private campaign plans.
• Require explicit approval before outbound, paid, public, or production calendar actions.
• Use retries and idempotency for any automation that writes calendar records, campaign tasks, or support schedules.

Validation Checklist

• Country, year, sector scope, channel, and intended use are explicit.
• Each date has a date_basis, source scope, confidence, and refresh rule.
• Lunar dates are not marked confirmed without official local confirmation.
• Sector calendars are not generalized to all workers or consumers.
• Cultural, religious, national-symbol, minors, salary, and conflict risks are reviewed.
• Evals in evals/prompts.yml still cover date certainty and safety boundaries.

Done Criteria

• The answer names files read and sources used.
• Calendar records distinguish estimated, official confirmed, official announced, sector-only, and unknown dates.
• No unsupported religious, cultural, legal, platform, salary, shopping, endpoint, pricing, or campaign-performance claims are included.