Scheduled tasks: 3 jobs Claude runs while your laptop's closed
A scheduled task is a job you describe once, and Claude runs it hourly, daily, weekly, on weekdays, or when you press run. These are the exact instructions for the 3 I'd start with: a morning brief, a Friday review and your weekly numbers.
What you need
A paid Claude plan (Pro, Max, Team or Enterprise). Scheduled tasks work in Claude Cowork and in the new Claude experience that's rolling out to Pro and Max.
On Team and Enterprise, your admin controls Cowork access.
The sources each task reads, connected in Claude or saved to your Claude account: email, calendar, meeting notes, the spreadsheet with your numbers. Scheduled tasks work with your connectors and the files saved to your Claude account.
Scheduled tasks run remotely, so they keep their schedule when your computer is asleep or the Claude Desktop app is closed. Each run is its own session, and you'll find upcoming and past runs under "Scheduled" in the left sidebar.
Step 1: create the task
From a chat. If your message box doesn't show "Chat" and "Cowork", you have the new Claude experience:
Paste one of the instructions below and add how often it should run, for example "Run this on weekdays at 7:00 am."
Answer any questions Claude asks about the schedule or the task.
Review the task name, schedule and instructions Claude proposes, then click "Schedule".
From the Scheduled page in Cowork:
Click "Scheduled" in the left sidebar.
Click "New task" in the upper right.
Choose "Create with Claude" and describe the task and how often, then click "Schedule" when Claude asks you to confirm. Or choose "Set up manually", fill in the task name, the prompt, the approval mode and how often it runs, and click "Save".
Projects can have their own scheduled tasks. If you built the CEO Office project from the CHIEF guide, set up the morning brief and the Friday review there.
Step 2: run it once before you trust it
From the Scheduled page, you can run a task on demand. Run each new task once, read the result, and check its "Sources checked / not reachable" line. If a source you named shows up as not reachable, fix that first. From the same page you can edit the instructions or the schedule, pause a task, resume it or delete it.
The 3 instructions
Change the words in [brackets]. These are short versions of the morning brief and Friday review. The CHIEF guide has the full prompts and the Company Brain file they read from.
1. Morning brief: weekdays at 7:00 am
Write my morning brief for today as a document.
Never send, reply to, accept or decline anything. If something needs a reply, write a draft and leave it for me.
Rank everything by these priorities: [your top 3 priorities this quarter, or the name of the file that lists them].
Use today's calendar and my email from the last 24 hours.
Give me:
Today: each meeting, with 1 line on what it's for.
Needs you: at most 5 items, each with why it needs me and by when. If nothing needs me, say so in 1 line.
Stuck: anything that has waited on me for more than 3 days.
Say which source each fact came from. Never guess a number or a commitment.
End with: Sources checked / not reachable: every source you read and every source you couldn't reach, by name.2. Friday review: Fridays at 4:00 pm
Write my Friday review as a document. Score my week against these priorities: [your top 3 priorities this quarter, or the name of the file that lists them].
Never send, reply to or accept anything. If a follow-up is due, write it as a draft and leave it for me.
Use this week's calendar, my sent email and this week's meeting notes [say where your notes live]. Read last Friday's review if you can reach it.
Give me:
Moved: what advanced, with the evidence and its source.
Didn't move: what stalled, and why.
Promised: everything I committed to, to whom, by when. Quote my own words where the notes have them.
Next week's 1 thing: a single item.
Never add a commitment you can't point to in a source.
End with: Sources checked / not reachable: every source you read and every source you couldn't reach, by name.3. Weekly numbers: Mondays at 8:00 am
Write my weekly numbers report for last week (Monday to Sunday) as a document.
Never send or share anything, and never change the source data. If something needs a follow-up, write it as a draft and leave it for me.
Read [the spreadsheet saved to my Claude account, or the connected source, for example a sheet in Google Drive or my CRM].
Report these numbers: [list them, for example new leads, booked calls, proposals sent].
For each number: last week, the week before, and the change. Then 1 line on the trend over the last 4 weeks.
Flag any number that moved more than [your threshold] either way, and say which rows or records it came from.
If a number is missing or the data looks wrong, say so. Never estimate or fill a gap.
End with: Sources checked / not reachable: every source you read and every source you couldn't reach, by name.The mistake to avoid
A task that needs files on your computer. Anthropic's help page says: "If a scheduled task requires local files or apps, it will only run locally." A cloud session reaches folders on your computer only while the Claude Desktop app is open there, so a Monday report built on a spreadsheet in your Documents folder needs your laptop on and the app open. Save the spreadsheet to your Claude account or connect the place it lives, then check the first run's "Sources checked / not reachable" line. And if you're on Pro or Max and made a scheduled task before October 6 that runs on your computer, it keeps running there. New scheduled tasks run in the cloud.