Scheduled tasks
Recurring filing work that runs on a schedule, what it may change, and why it only runs while the app is open
Some work comes back every week: filing new invoices, updating a summary, checking a folder for anything that arrived. A scheduled task records the instruction once and runs it on a schedule, so you do not retype it.
Open the list through Scheduled tasks in the sidebar. The entry exists in Cowork only.
Setting one up
Pick the schedule: every few hours, daily, or weekly on chosen weekdays. There is no free-form cron field, on purpose.
A finished run stays in the history as a normal conversation, so you can read afterwards what was done. Failed and skipped runs are listed with their reason.
What a run may do
| Setting | Mode it runs in |
|---|---|
| Default | Plan: reads and reports, changes nothing |
| Allow changes | Normal: the ordinary approval gate. It asks before every change |
A scheduled task never runs in Auto. "Allow changes" switches it to the normal gate, not to unattended writing. A run that reaches a change pauses, notifies you, and waits, possibly for hours. That is the intended behaviour: nobody is watching an unattended run, so nothing unattended writes without a decision.
Standing permissions you granted earlier apply here as they do everywhere else. That is the way to make a specific recurring change run without stopping: approve it once in a normal conversation with always allow, and the scheduled run then passes that gate on its own.
While the app is not running
The schedule lives in the running app. The window closing with Cmd/Ctrl+W is fine, the app stays
in the tray. But if the app was fully quit at the scheduled time, that run is skipped and logged
as skipped, and it is only caught up later if you enabled catch up missed runs for that task.
The dialog states this too. It matters most for a task scheduled overnight on a laptop you shut down.
Notifications
A run reports through the same channel as everything else: finished, failed, or waiting for your approval. That is what makes an unattended run usable at all, since otherwise you would only find a stopped run by chance.
Turn on System notifications under Notifications. Without it a run that stops for an approval waits silently.
Practical notes
- A run that is still going when the next one comes due does not start twice.
- The instruction text is what the assistant gets, nothing more. It has no memory of the previous run, so write it so it works standalone: "file everything in the Inbox folder that is not filed yet", rather than "carry on where you left off".
- Ask for a short report at the end. That way the conversation in the history opens with what happened, instead of you having to read through the steps.