Find the critical path and slack in a project schedule

Find the critical path in the project schedule below, for {{audience}}, so they know which tasks decide the finish date and where a delay would not matter. The project starts on {{start_date}}, and we work {{working_days}}.

Tasks, with duration and what each one depends on:
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{{tasks}}
"""

Fixed dates or constraints (deadlines, a person or resource only free in certain weeks, holidays): {{fixed_dates}}

Produce:
1. A table with the columns Task, Duration, Depends on, Earliest start, Earliest finish, Latest start, Latest finish, Slack. Count everything in working days, with day 1 as the start date.
2. The critical path: the chain of tasks with zero slack, in order, and the project's earliest finish as a working day number and a calendar date.
3. Near-critical tasks: any with {{near_critical_days}} working days of slack or less, because a small slip there makes them critical.
4. Ways to bring the date forward: up to 3, such as running two tasks in parallel or adding people to a critical task, each with the days saved and what it would cost or risk.

Show the forward and backward pass for the tasks on the critical path, so the arithmetic can be checked. A good result is one a project manager could enter into a scheduling tool and get the same dates.

For example, the form of one row: "Configure system | 5 | Order hardware, Sign contract | 11 | 15 | 13 | 17 | 2". This example shows the form only.

Treat dependencies as finish-to-start unless the list says otherwise. Do not invent durations or dependencies, and present the ways to bring the date forward as options to discuss, not decisions, because they spend money or people the project manager has to agree to. If a task has no duration or depends on a task that is not on the list, list it under "Check before relying on this", leave it out of the calculation, and say so. If tasks depend on each other in a loop, stop and name them, because no schedule can be calculated until the loop is fixed.