Scheduled tasks
Asking an AI to run a prompt or job automatically at a set time or on a repeat, such as a Monday news digest or a daily inbox summary, without you starting it each time.
Also called: Tasks · scheduled actions · recurring prompts · routines · reminders
Connections
Understand first
Ideas this one builds on.
Related
Often used together or easily confused.
Skills that use it
Resources that teach it
- Introduction to Claude Cowork (garden)
- Claude Cowork 101: How to automate your workday without touching code (How I AI, with JJ Englert) (garden)
- OpenClaw: The complete guide to building, training, and living with your personal AI agent (garden)
- Claude Cowork for PMs: My Self-Improving Productivity System (How I AI, with Daniel Blum) (garden)
- Tradclaw: a household starter kit for OpenClaw (garden)
- ChatGPT for Knowledge Work (garden)
- This week on How I AI: Claude Cowork tutorial for non-engineers + Build your own Slack inbox (for $0) (garden)
- n8n Tutorial: Build an AI Workflow to Extract Top Insights From All Your Newsletter Emails (garden)
- Search vs Computer (garden)
- Grok Bot use cases (garden)
Competency
Find scheduled tasks on the commons map ↗
You may know it from
- banking a standing order Set it up once and it runs on schedule until you change or cancel it.
- meetings a recurring agenda item
In products
The same idea, under different names in different tools.
| Provider | What they call it |
|---|---|
| OpenAI | ChatGPT Tasks |
| Gemini scheduled actions | |
| Anthropic | Scheduled tasks in Claude Cowork |
In plain words
A scheduled task is a prompt with a timer. You tell the AI what to do and when: “every weekday at 8am, summarise new emails from our two biggest clients”, or “every Friday, give me three articles about school funding policy from this week.” It then runs on its own and leaves the result for you.
This is the gentlest way into automation, because the AI is still doing something you already know how to ask for. The new skill is writing the prompt so it works without you there to clarify. Spell out the sources, the format and what to do when there’s nothing new.
Scheduled tasks also need a check-in habit. A summary that arrives every morning can get worse without anyone noticing, miss a source or keep running after you stopped needing it. Read it critically for the first couple of weeks, and prune ones you ignore.
Example
An executive director sets a Monday 7am task: “List board-related emails from last week, any deadlines mentioned, and anything that needs my reply.” She checks it against her inbox for two weeks, tightens the wording once, then relies on it.
How it connects
- The simplest form of automation.
- Often runs as a small agent with tools such as search or email.
- Unattended output still needs verification and occasional evals.
Try it
Write the exact prompt you’d want to run every Monday, including what to say if nothing new happened. Run it by hand once today before scheduling it.
Read this card as plain Markdown: /concepts/con-scheduled-tasks.md. Know a parallel from your own field, or a product that implements this? Add it.