Claude Code Scheduled Tasks

1. What Are Scheduled Tasks?

A scheduled task tells Claude Code: “Run this prompt later or run it repeatedly.”

The current Claude Code documentation describes two closely related ways to do this inside a session:

• /loop — the quickest way to repeat a prompt while the session stays open.
• Scheduled tasks / cron tools — tasks Claude can create, list, and cancel, including one-time reminders.

2. Why Scheduled Tasks Are Useful

3. The Three Scheduling Options

4. The Fastest Method: /loop

/loop is a bundled skill designed for repeated work.

4.1 Fixed interval + prompt

/loop 5m check if the deployment finished and tell me what happened

This asks Claude to run the prompt repeatedly on a fixed cadence.

4.2 Prompt only

/loop check the deploy

When no interval is supplied, Claude dynamically chooses the delay between iterations.

4.3 Bare /loop

/loop

A bare /loop uses the built-in maintenance prompt, or your custom loop.md if one exists.

4.4 Run a skill repeatedly

/loop 20m /review-pr 1234

A scheduled fire can invoke skills only when Claude is allowed to invoke them on its own.

5. Fixed Intervals

You can write the interval before the prompt or as a natural-language clause.

Supported interval units are:

6. Dynamic /loop Scheduling

If you omit the interval, Claude chooses a delay dynamically after each iteration.

The delay is between 1 minute and 1 hour, based on what Claude observes.

• Shorter waits when a build is finishing.
• Shorter waits when a PR is active.
• Longer waits when nothing is pending.

/loop check whether CI passed and address any review comments

After each iteration Claude reports the chosen delay and why it selected it.

7. The Built-In Maintenance Prompt

When you run:

/loop

Claude uses a built-in maintenance prompt unless you provide a custom loop.md.

The maintenance behavior works roughly in this order:

1. Continue unfinished work from the conversation.
2. Tend to the current branch's pull request — review comments, failed CI, and merge conflicts.
3. When nothing else is pending, perform cleanup such as bug hunts or simplification.

8. Customize /loop with loop.md

You can replace the default maintenance prompt with your own instructions.

Claude Code checks these locations:

Example:

Check the release/next PR. If CI is red, pull the failing
job log, diagnose, and push a minimal fix. If new review
comments have arrived, address each one and resolve the
thread. If everything is green and quiet, say so in one line.

The file is plain Markdown. You write it as if you were typing the /loop prompt directly.

9. How to Stop a /loop

For a self-paced /loop waiting for its next iteration, press Esc.

There is an important distinction:

If an iteration finishes without rescheduling or stopping, Claude Code schedules a fallback wakeup of about 20 minutes and ends the loop if the next iteration also does not reschedule.

10. One-Time Reminders

For a one-shot reminder, use natural language instead of /loop.

remind me at 3pm to push the release branch

in 45 minutes, check whether the integration tests passed

Claude schedules a single-fire task that deletes itself after running.

11. Manage Scheduled Tasks

You can manage tasks using natural language.

what scheduled tasks do I have?

cancel the deploy check job

Under the hood, Claude Code uses three cron tools:

Each scheduled task has an 8-character ID. A session can contain up to 50 scheduled tasks at once.

12. What Happens When a Task Fires?

• The scheduler checks every second for due tasks.
• Scheduled prompts are queued at low priority.
• A task fires between turns, not while Claude is in the middle of a response.
• If Claude is busy, the task waits until the current turn ends.
• Times are interpreted in the local timezone.

13. Jitter: Why the Exact Minute Can Move

Claude Code adds deterministic timing offsets to reduce many sessions hitting the API at exactly the same wall-clock moment.

The offset is derived from the task ID, so the same task gets the same offset.

14. Seven-Day Expiry

Recurring session-scoped tasks automatically expire 7 days after creation.

The task fires one final time and then deletes itself.

15. Cron Expression Basics

CronCreate accepts a standard five-field cron expression:

minute hour day-of-month month day-of-week

Supported field syntax

• * — wildcard
• 5 — single value
• */15 — step
• 1-5 — range
• 1,15,30 — list

Day-of-week uses 0 or 7 for Sunday through 6 for Saturday.

16. Day-of-Month + Day-of-Week Behavior

When both the day-of-month and day-of-week fields are constrained, a date matches if either field matches. This follows standard vixie-cron semantics.

17. Session Scope — The Most Important Concept

Scheduled tasks belong to the current Claude Code session/conversation.

Tasks can be restored when you resume a session with --resume or --continue, subject to the documented exceptions.

18. No Catch-Up Behavior

Suppose you schedule a task every 10 minutes, but Claude is busy for 35 minutes.

19. /loop vs CronCreate

20. When NOT to Use Scheduled Tasks

21. Scheduled Tasks vs Channels vs Goals

22. Practical Examples for Developers

Example A — Deployment Check

/loop 10m check whether the staging deployment finished.
If it failed, inspect the failure and summarize the likely cause.

Example B — Pull Request Watch

/loop 15m check the current PR for new review comments,
failed CI, or merge conflicts. Tell me only if something changed.

Example C — Integration Tests

in 45 minutes, check whether the integration tests passed

Example D — Daily Local Development Check

/loop 1d inspect the current branch for unfinished work
and summarize anything that still needs attention

23. Next.js / Frontend Workflow Example

/loop 10m check the staging frontend deployment.
If the build failed, inspect the build output and identify
the first actionable error.

This can be useful when you are actively working on a frontend deployment and want Claude Code to periodically check progress.

24. Spring Boot Backend Workflow Example

/loop 10m check whether the Spring Boot deployment is healthy.
Inspect the available logs and report startup failures,
database connection errors, or failing health checks.

25. Disable Scheduled Tasks

You can disable the scheduler entirely with:

CLAUDE_CODE_DISABLE_CRON=1

When disabled:

• Cron tools are unavailable.
• /loop becomes unavailable.
• Already scheduled tasks stop firing.

26. Common Mistakes

27. Best Practices

1. Make prompts state-aware: ask Claude to inspect the current state instead of assuming every run is a new task.
2. Prefer event-driven automation: if an external system can notify Claude directly, avoid unnecessary polling.
3. Use clear stop conditions: tell Claude what “done” means.
4. Keep recurring prompts focused: avoid asking the loop to start unrelated initiatives.
5. Remember the seven-day limit: session-scoped recurring tasks are not a permanent scheduler.
6. Choose the right scheduler: local work, cloud work, and CI automation have different requirements.

28. Quick Decision Tree

29. Interview / Revision Questions

1. What problem do Claude Code scheduled tasks solve?
2. What is the difference between /loop and a one-time reminder?
3. What happens when you run a bare /loop?
4. How does dynamic interval selection work?
5. What is loop.md?
6. Where can loop.md be located?
7. What are CronCreate, CronList, and CronDelete?
8. What is the maximum number of scheduled tasks in a session?
9. What is cron jitter?
10. How long do recurring session-scoped tasks live?
11. What happens if Claude is busy when a scheduled task becomes due?
12. Does Claude replay every missed interval?
13. What happens when a new conversation starts?
14. When should you use Channels instead of polling?
15. When should you use Routines, Desktop scheduled tasks, or GitHub Actions?

30. Practice Exercises

31. Cheat Sheet

32. Memory Map

33. Final Takeaway