Scheduled Tasks

Overview

Everything you've learned so far (skills, connectors, projects) only delivers value when you actively kick off a task. Scheduled tasks change that. They're how you set up a Cowork workflow to run on a cadence, so the work happens automatically, on time, without you having to remember to prompt for it.

A scheduled task is essentially a skill that runs on a schedule. You set it up once, tell Cowork when to run it, and from then on it handles the work for you.

Two Ways to Set One Up

There are two routes into creating a scheduled task.

The /schedule command. Type

/schedule

inside any Cowork conversation. At its simplest, you can start a new task, type /schedule, and describe what you want, something like "summarise my Slack messages every morning at 8am." Cowork might ask a couple of follow-up questions, then the scheduled task is set up.

The more powerful use is at the end of a conversation where you've already refined a workflow. You run the task, give feedback, iterate until the output is right, and then type /schedule to capture the whole conversation as a recurring task. That's the same pattern as building a skill, just with a cadence attached.

The Scheduled Tasks page. You can also create one manually from the Scheduled section in the sidebar. You'll get a form where you write out the task name, the prompt, and the cadence yourself. Useful if you already know exactly what you want, but you miss out on the benefit of a refined conversation behind it.

What This Looks Like in Practice

Imagine you want a morning briefing that triages your inbox before you start work. You've already got Gmail connected and a project set up for managing your email.

You'd start by running the task yourself inside that project:

"Go through my inbox from the last 24 hours. Categorise each email by priority, draft replies for anything that needs a response, and save the briefing as a report in my project folder."

Cowork works through it, you review the result, give feedback ("group these differently," "the replies read too formal," "skip newsletters") and run it again. You refine until the output is what you'd actually want to see waiting for you every morning.

Once it's right, type

/schedule

in the same conversation. Cowork captures the full workflow, asks about cadence, and you set it to run every weekday at 7am. From the next morning onward, the briefing's sitting in your project folder before you sit down at your desk.

And just like a skill, you can keep refining it. Each round of feedback makes the next run a little better.

Choosing a Cadence

Cadence options are flexible. You can run a task hourly, daily, on weekdays only, or set it to on-demand so you trigger it yourself when you need it. Each scheduled task runs as its own Cowork session, with full access to your connectors, skills, and plugins.

A useful rule of thumb is to pick the cadence that matches when the inputs to the task actually change. An inbox triage is daily because new emails arrive every day. A weekly metrics report is weekly because the numbers settle once a week. There's no real benefit to running a task more often than the data behind it moves.

When They Actually Run

Scheduled tasks only run while the Claude Desktop app is open and your computer is awake. If your laptop is closed or the app isn't running when a task is due, it won't run in the background. It'll run as soon as you open the app back up.

If you're planning to rely on scheduled tasks regularly, there's an option in the Scheduled Tasks settings to keep your computer awake even when the lid is closed. It's worth turning on if you want the morning briefing to actually be there in the morning.

Managing Scheduled Tasks

You can view and manage scheduled tasks from two places.

The Scheduled section in the sidebar shows every scheduled task you've created, across all your projects. Useful for a top-down view of everything that's set to run.

The Scheduled Tasks panel inside a project shows only the tasks for that specific project. Useful when you're in project context and want to know what's running there.

Click into any scheduled task to see which project it belongs to, which folders it has access to, the full instructions, and its run history. If something's not running the way you want, this is where you can adjust it or remove it.

Pause Here

Think about something you do on a regular cadence. There are two ways in.

For something simple and well-understood, start a new task, type

/schedule

, and set it up from there. For something more involved, run the full workflow in a project first, refine it until the output is what you want, and then type

/schedule

in the same conversation to capture the refined version on a cadence. This is the better route for anything where the output needs to be a particular shape, because you're scheduling the version you've already proven out, not a first draft.

You can also go into an existing Cowork conversation that you want to run regularly and type

/schedule

there to turn it into a recurring task.

Key Takeaways

A scheduled task is a skill that runs on a cadence. Set it up once, tell Cowork when to run it, and the work happens automatically from then on.
Two ways in: /schedule and the Scheduled Tasks page. /schedule is the flexible one because it can capture a refined workflow from a real conversation. The manual form is fine when you already know exactly what you want.
Refine before you schedule. Anything where the output needs to be a particular shape benefits from running it manually a few times first, then scheduling the refined version.
Scheduled tasks only run while the Desktop app is open and your computer is awake. If you're relying on them daily, turn on the option to keep your computer awake when the lid is closed.
Manage them from the sidebar or inside a project. Sidebar gives you the cross-project view; the project panel gives you the local one.