Intermediate

Scheduled Actions

Claude can run tasks automatically on a schedule — a morning briefing that pulls from your calendar and news, a weekly report generated every Friday, a recurring data analysis. You describe the task once, set the schedule, and Claude handles it without you having to ask again.

Scheduled tasks were announced in February 2026 and are available via two routes: the Cowork tab in the Claude desktop app (for persistent recurring tasks) and the/loop skill in Claude Code (for session-based schedules).

Cowork Scheduled Tasks (Desktop App)

Scheduled tasks in Cowork are the primary way to set up persistent, long-running automations. Access via the Cowork tab in the Claude desktop app — requires Pro plan or above.

What you can schedule

• Morning briefings — daily summary from calendar + news + email
• Weekly report generation — pull data, summarise, format, send
• Friday team presentations — aggregate updates from Jira/GitHub
• Periodic data analysis — process new files, send summary
• Any Cowork task with a defined trigger time

Key features

• Catch-up — if Claude was offline when a task was due, it runs when next available
• Approval gates — pause before sending/publishing to require your sign-off
• Per-task permissions — control exactly which connectors each scheduled task can access
• Runs in an isolated VM; data stays on-device

Setting Up a Scheduled Task

1. Open the Claude desktop app → click the Cowork tab
2. Describe the task: what you want done, what data Claude should use, and what the output should be
3. Set the schedule: daily, weekly, on specific days, or custom interval
4. Configure permissions — which connectors the task can use
5. Set an approval gate if you want to review before Claude sends/publishes
6. Activate the task — Claude will run it at the next scheduled time

Claude Code: /loop Skill

For developers using Claude Code, the /loop skill sets up a background cron job that runs for the duration of a terminal session. This is lightweight and quick to configure, but session-based — the schedule stops when you close the session.

# Run a task every 30 minutes in this session
/loop 30m Run the test suite and report failures

# Run every 2 hours
/loop 2h Check the staging API health and alert if any endpoint is down

# Run daily (within this session)
/loop 1d Summarise all new GitHub issues opened today

Session-based limits

• Recurring tasks fire up to 10% of their period late (capped at 15 minutes)
• Auto-expire 3 days after creation (fires once more then self-deletes)
• Stops if the Claude Code session is closed

Plan Requirements

Cowork Scheduled Tasks

Requires Claude desktop app + Pro, Max, Team, or Enterprise plan

Claude Code /loop

Available to all Claude Code users (Pro/Max subscription)

Good Use Cases

Daily: Morning briefing from calendar + key emails + top news

Weekly: Team standup prep — pull Jira/Linear status for each member

Monthly: Expense report — aggregate transaction data, format, email

On trigger: Process new files in a folder when they appear

Recurring: Run test suite every hour during a release window

Periodic: Summarise Slack channels you didn't read on Monday morning

Checklist: Do You Understand This?

What is the difference between Cowork scheduled tasks and Claude Code /loop?
What does the catch-up feature do?
What plan is required for Cowork scheduled tasks?
How long does a /loop task persist before auto-expiring?