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Agents

Scheduled Tasks & Recurring Actions

Run agent actions on a clock or recurring trigger: once, daily, weekly, or custom. Automation continues without someone sitting in the chat.

Interactive demo

Scheduled Tasks
Current time: 9:48:25 PM
Daily Report
Every day at 9:00 AM
Next: In 2 hours
Weekly Backup
Every Monday
Next: In 3 days
Monthly Summary
1st of month
Next: In 12 days

Overview

How might we design scheduled tasks & recurring actions so people can trust and act on AI output?

When to use

  • Perfect for automation platforms, background job systems, and workflow tools where scheduled and recurring tasks enable proactive, time-based automation.

When to skip

  • One-off jobs that should stay manual.
  • Tasks that need fresh human judgment every time they fire.
  • Environments where unattended runs are policy-forbidden.

Rules

  • Schedules that fire with no run history or last-result link.

  • No pause/cancel for a recurring job.

  • Timezone ambiguity (“9am” with no zone shown).

  • Quietly retrying forever after repeated failures.

Evidence

ProductImplementation
ZapierSchedule triggers for recurring zaps.
MakeCron-like scenario scheduling.
GitHub ActionsCron workflows with visible run history.
ChatGPT / agent platformsScheduled agent tasks and reminders.

FAQ

What is a scheduled AI task?

It is an agent job that runs at a set time or interval without the user starting each run, with a place to review outcomes afterward.

What must the schedule UI show?

Cadence, timezone, next run, last status, and pause/delete. Link each run to logs or outputs.

How does this relate to time-delayed execution?

Time delay is a short cancel window before one action. Scheduling is recurring or future-dated automation.

What happens on failure?

Surface the error, cap retries, and notify the owner. Silent missed schedules destroy trust.