Scheduled Tasks

What You Need to Know

Scheduled tasks turn Cowork from a tool you prompt into a tool that works on its own. Set up a task once — define what to do, when to do it, and where to put the output — and it runs automatically at the cadence you choose. Daily email triage at 7AM. Weekly project summaries every Friday at 4PM. Hourly competitive price checks during business hours. The task runs without you typing a single prompt.

But "automatic" doesn't mean "autonomous." Scheduled tasks still run on your local machine, still require the Claude Desktop app to be open, and still produce output that needs human review. Understanding these boundaries is the difference between building reliable automations and creating a system that silently fails every time your laptop goes to sleep.

Two ways to create scheduled tasks

You can create a scheduled task in two ways:

1. The /schedule command — type /schedule in any Cowork conversation. Claude walks you through specifying the task, cadence, and time. Quick and conversational.
2. The Scheduled page — click the Scheduled icon in the left sidebar to open the management interface. From here you can create, view, edit, pause, resume, delete, and manually trigger any task. This is your control centre.

Both methods produce the same result. Use /schedule when you know exactly what you want and want to set it up quickly. Use the Scheduled page when you want to review all your automations in one place or manage existing tasks.

Cadence options

Scheduled tasks support five cadence options:

• Hourly — runs every hour on the hour
• Daily — runs once per day at a set time
• Weekly — runs once per week on a chosen day and time
• Weekdays — runs Monday to Friday at a set time
• Manual/on-demand — sits ready but only runs when you explicitly trigger it via "Run Now"

Choose the cadence that matches how often the underlying data changes. A daily email triage makes sense because new emails arrive overnight. An hourly competitor price check might make sense during a pricing war. A weekly project summary aligns with the rhythm of team reporting cycles.

Full Cowork capabilities inherited

Scheduled tasks aren't limited to simple text generation. They inherit everything Cowork can do:

• Local file access — read, write, create, and modify files in granted working folders
• Connectors — query Gmail, Google Calendar, Slack, Google Drive, and any other connected service
• Skills — invoke built-in Agent Skills and custom Skills for processing logic
• Computer Use — interact with desktop applications via screen interaction (if enabled)

This means a single scheduled task can pull data from a Connector, process local files, apply a custom Skill, and save output — all automatically. The task definition is just a prompt, and that prompt can leverage any capability available in an interactive Cowork session.

The must-be-awake requirement

This is the single most important limitation to internalise: scheduled tasks run locally on your machine. There's no cloud execution, no background service, no daemon process. If your computer is asleep, powered off, or the Claude Desktop app is closed, the task can't run.

For tasks scheduled during off-hours — a 6AM email triage, a midnight data backup — you must configure your Mac to stay awake. Go to System Settings > Energy and set "Prevent automatic sleeping when the display is off," or use a wake schedule to ensure the machine is active at the right time.

Skipped runs: the safety net

If your computer is asleep or the app is closed when a task is due, the task is marked as "skipped" — not failed, not cancelled, not lost. When you open your laptop and the Claude Desktop app starts, all skipped tasks execute immediately in sequence. You receive a notification for each one.

This means a task scheduled for 8AM that runs at 10AM (because you opened your laptop at 10AM) still executes — just later than planned. The output is the same; only the timing changes.

Managing scheduled tasks

The Scheduled page is your single pane of glass for all automations:

• View — see all tasks with their cadence, next run time, and status
• Edit — modify the task instructions or cadence without recreating from scratch
• Pause — temporarily stop a task without deleting it (useful during holidays or project changes)
• Resume — reactivate a paused task
• Delete — permanently remove a task you no longer need
• Run Now — trigger an immediate execution to test before relying on the automation

Always use "Run Now" to test a new scheduled task before leaving it to run unattended. The first execution reveals whether the Connectors respond correctly, the file paths resolve, and the output format matches your expectations.

The human review requirement

Scheduled tasks run without a human in the loop. This is the point — automation saves time by eliminating manual intervention. But it also means no one is watching when Claude hallucinates a statistic, misinterprets a data source, or encounters a prompt injection through a connected service.

Build a review habit: check at least the first three runs of any new scheduled task manually. Verify the output against the source data. If the task produces a weekly report, read the first three weekly reports before trusting it. Errors in unattended tasks compound over weeks if no one reviews the output.

---

Common Mistakes

---

Hands-On Activity

---

Practice Question

---

Sources

• Schedule recurring tasks in Cowork — Anthropic
• Let Claude use your computer in Cowork — Anthropic
• Use Cowork safely — Anthropic