You write the instruction once, choose when it runs, and the result arrives in your chat like any other message.
It works much like an alarm clock, except that the agent is the one being woken, and it has work to do when the alarm goes off.
How does a scheduled task work?
The schedule is stored by the software that runs the agent, the agent engine, on whatever machine hosts it. At the set time, the agent reads the saved instruction, draws on what it knows from memory and recent conversations, and sends you the result. Typical patterns are every weekday at 7:30, every Friday at 16:00, or the first of each month.
Developers call the same thing a cron job, after cron, the long-standing Unix tool for running jobs on a timetable. You'll see both names, and in practice they mean the same thing.
Why it's useful
Most software waits for you to open it. A scheduled task comes to you, and that matters because the things you forget to check are usually the ones you needed to see. A morning plan, a weekly recap or a monthly nudge to review your subscriptions all happen without you having to remember to ask.
The tasks people keep are narrow. A daily digest of everything tends to get read for three days and then ignored, while a 150-word note on the three things due this week usually survives. Our guide to scheduled check-ins covers how to word them.
An example
A physiotherapist who runs her own clinic sets a task for Sunday at 19:00: "From what I've told you this week, list next week's admin: invoices to chase, CPD deadlines, anything I said I'd follow up. Flag anything older than two weeks. Under 150 words."
Most Sundays the list is useful. In a week when she barely messaged the agent, it's thin, because the agent can only work from what it has been told. Either way, she didn't have to remember to ask for it.
How is a scheduled task different from a reminder?
A reminder tells you to do something, whereas a scheduled task does some of the work and reports back. "Remind me to look at invoices on Friday" gets you a nudge. "Every Friday, list the invoices I've mentioned this week that are still unpaid and draft a polite chaser for each" gets you drafts you can check and send yourself.
Common questions
Can a scheduled task send things on my behalf?
It can if the agent has the tools and permissions to do so. That's why anything that sends, pays or deletes on a schedule should wait for your approval, while scheduled summaries and drafts are low risk and rarely need a checkpoint.
Why did my scheduled message stop arriving?
The usual causes are an expired chat connection, a task that was edited or removed, or a change of model provider. Ask the agent to list its scheduled tasks and check that the one you expect is still there and still pointed at the right chat.
How do I change or cancel a scheduled task?
On most personal agents you ask in plain language, for example "move the Friday recap to Thursday at five" or "stop the morning plan". Afterwards, ask for the list of scheduled tasks to confirm the change took effect.