# Scheduled tasks

> Cowork schedules tasks, not skills. Wrap a task around the skill that does the work, run it on a clock, and the result is waiting when you sit down

_11 min · beginner · track: personal-productivity · id: scheduled-tasks_

> **Team:** 
>
> Some work is most convenient to do in the moment, when you need it.
> Other work has a predictable rhythm and is much better if you do not
> have to wait for it to finish. Cowork lets you schedule a task to run
> on a clock; the task itself calls one of your skills to actually do
> the work, so the result is waiting when you sit down.

## Run in the moment, or schedule on a rhythm

**The unit you schedule is a Cowork task. The task calls one of your skills to do the actual work.** A skill is a reusable playbook; a task is one specific run of that playbook with a prompt around it. The same skill can power both an in-the-moment task and a scheduled one. The right choice depends on how the work happens in your week.

Calling your meeting-prep skill on demand five minutes before a one-off external call is fine. Calling that same skill from a scheduled task that runs at 8am every weekday and preps all of today's meetings into one document is a different proposition: by the time you finish your first coffee, the brief for the whole day is sitting there.

Two questions decide which side a piece of work falls on:

- **Does this happen on a known cadence?** If yes, scheduling pays off.
- **Do I want to wait for it to finish?** If no, scheduling pays off again.

Work that does not fit either question stays in the moment. Work that fits both gets a scheduled task wrapped around it.

> **Warning:** 
>
> **Scheduled tasks only run while your computer is awake and online.**
> If the laptop is closed in your bag at 8am, the 8am task does not run.
> You can always hit "run now" on the task to fire it manually if it
> missed its slot, but the value of scheduling comes from being there on
> time.

## Inspiration: tasks worth scheduling

**The right scheduled tasks for you are the ones that fit how you already work.** Think about your week: when do you reflect, when do you plan, when do you scan for anything urgent? Set the schedules so they amplify those moments instead of creating extra noise.

A few that map to common rhythms, as inspiration:

- **Morning meeting brief.** A task that calls your meeting-prep skill for every meeting on today's calendar and merges the briefs into one document, ready before your first coffee.
- **Daily triage.** A task that calls a triage skill to scan email and Slack for anything urgent and outputs a short list. Useful when you would otherwise be opening the inbox compulsively to check whether something needs you.
- **Weekly priority planner.** A task that calls a planner skill on Sunday evening, reading next week's calendar, last week's commitments, and the docs you keep, then drafts what the week is actually about.

None of these is mandatory. Pick the ones that match the rhythms you already have.

## Practical setup

**The easiest way to schedule a task is to just ask Cowork to do it.** Open a task and say "schedule a task every Monday morning to prep all my meetings for the day." Cowork creates the schedule, picks the right time, and wires it up. Faster than configuring it from the Scheduled tasks view in the sidebar, and the schedule is right there in the conversation if you want to adjust it.

If you would rather set it up manually, the Scheduled tasks view is in the left sidebar; you can also type `/schedule` inside any existing task to convert it. Either way, run the task manually once first to confirm the output is what you want, then schedule.

<div class="image-row">
  <img src="/courses/scheduled-tasks/scheduled-tasks.jpg" alt="The Cowork Scheduled tasks page with a Keep awake toggle in the top right, plus two scheduled tasks: a Weekly priority planner running every Sunday at 8pm and a Daily triage running weekdays at 8am" />
</div>

Two practical things:

- **Use the Keep awake toggle.** The Scheduled tasks view has a "Keep awake" switch that stops your laptop from sleeping. It is what makes 8am triages actually run on a closed-lid laptop. Lock the screen anyway: awake and locked is the right state, so nobody can use the laptop while it is open.
- **Schedule for times you will be there.** If you know you are always in the office at 9am, schedule for 9:15 so the result is ready by the time you finish your first coffee. The point is not that the agent runs while you sleep; it is that the result lands at the moment you would otherwise have started doing the work yourself.

## Add them gradually

You probably want one or two scheduled tasks before three or four. Each one is something to read in the morning and a skill to keep tuned. Start with the one that fits your week best, give it a week, then add the next. Six tasks added on the same day is how the morning fills with notifications and the skills drift because nobody has time to keep them all sharp.

## Hands-on

1. **Pick the first scheduled task that fits your week, with the skill it should call.** A morning meeting brief if your day is meeting-heavy, a daily triage if your mornings start with email-scrolling, a Sunday planner if your weeks tend to start fuzzy. Run it manually once.

2. **Ask Cowork to schedule it for a time you will be at your laptop.** "Schedule this every weekday at 9:15am" inside the task is enough. Toggle "Keep awake" on the Scheduled tasks view, lock the screen, let it run.

3. **Add the next one when the first feels stable.** No rush. The compounding comes from each task being well-tuned, not from having many.

## Reflect

- When in your week do you already reflect or plan? That is where a scheduled task probably fits without needing to invent a new ritual.
- Of your current skills, which one is most painful to wait for? That is the one to wrap a scheduled task around.