It is all good to have AI agents helping you. But most annoying thing I see with them is I have to be there to invoke and guide. If there is a agent who activitate it self, it would be great. I know there are several solutions for this. But recently I came across Schedule Tasks in Claude Cowork. So I have given a try.
You need to have Claude desktop app installed on your desktop/laptop to get this working. I'm not going to go into installation of it and configuring it here, and assuming it is already done.
Accessing Schedule Tasks
Once you are in Claude desktop app, go to Claude Cowork tab and there you can see "Scheduled" section.
As per screenshot you see all your already created scheduled tasks.
One of the most important thing to remember is these schedule tasks are NOT using Windows Task Scheduler or any windows service. Instead it purely depend on Claude App running on the desktop either open or in background. You can see if it is running background by checking apps on system tray. Every minute app check for schedule task list and see if it has a task to run and if it find a one it invoke it.
However, it will do a catch up next time you open up the Claude, if it missed a one. Note that it will only run one catch up. For example if computer was turned off for days, it will only run last missed run.
Scheduled task section has option to make sure computer doesn't go to sleep if claude app is running on background. If running the task on schedule is important, it will be good idea to turn this on.
Creating a Scheduled Task
Press the "New Task" button.
You will something like below:
Here I'm going to create claude cowork schedule task to grab latest tech info for my area of expertise to keep my self up to date.
Below the big box under the description, give proper instruction on what to do. Rather than typing your self you can use LLM chat to create a instructions for it. Here is what I have got as instructions:
