Claude scheduled tasks: recurring briefings and work

A recurring client brief needs more than a schedule. It needs the right source, a clear period to review and a useful answer when something is missing. Start there, then choose the setup that matches your Claude interface.

Check the experience and access your account has

Anthropic documents scheduled tasks on all paid plans (Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise), both in Cowork and in the new Claude experience. To tell which one you have, look at the message box: if it no longer shows “Chat” and “Cowork” options, you have the new experience. It is rolling out gradually to Pro and Max, and Anthropic has not yet made it generally available on Enterprise.

Cowork runs on desktop for every paid plan, and “on web and mobile for Pro and Max plans”. On Team plans, and on Enterprise plans when an owner enables it, web and mobile are available on a limited basis and not yet generally released. Upcoming and past runs are listed under Scheduled in the left sidebar “on any surface”, so you can check a run from your phone.

Scheduled tasks run remotely, which means they keep their cadence “even when your computer is asleep or the Claude Desktop app is closed”. A task that needs local files or apps runs only locally. On Pro and Max, tasks created before 6 October that run on your computer keep running there. These distinctions come from Anthropic's scheduling guide, checked 21 October 2026.

Claude Code, Anthropic's developer tool, schedules work separately. Claude Code's scheduling documentation (checked 21 October 2026) says it “offers three ways to schedule recurring or one-off work”: cloud tasks, which run on Anthropic-managed infrastructure by default and need neither your machine nor an open session; Desktop scheduled tasks, which run on your machine; and /loop, which repeats a prompt inside an open session on your machine and can be restored when you resume with --resume, with documented exceptions. This guide covers the Claude and Cowork tasks, not those.

For a work account, confirm that the organization has enabled the relevant access. Before scheduling a report from a folder, establish where that folder lives and which version the task will read. “The document is on my laptop” and “the task can access it remotely” are different statements.

Create the task, then review its instructions

In the unified experience, describe the recurring work in a conversation, answer the setup questions and review the proposal before choosing Schedule. In Cowork, open Scheduled → New task → Create with Claude. Review the name, cadence and instructions, then confirm. Cowork also offers New task → Set up manually: a form for the task name, the prompt, the approval mode, the frequency (hourly, daily, weekly, on weekdays or manually) and, optionally, the model and the folder Claude works in, finished with Save. Anthropic's guide documents all three paths.

A Monday briefing with a clear source boundary

Suppose you coordinate a fictional client rollout for Alder Services. Friday's steering note says the pilot is waiting for a training owner. A later update names that owner but leaves the session date open. The useful Monday brief is the change between those two facts.

Try a task description like this, replacing the source reference with material your account can actually access:

Every Monday at 9 am London time, prepare my Alder Services brief from the authorized engagement material I identify. Cover changes since the previous Monday. Give me: decisions confirmed, commitments due this week, and questions still unresolved. Include the date and source for each item. Separate proposed dates from agreed dates. If a source is unavailable, name the gap. Leave the brief for my review; do not send messages or change shared records.

This is an illustrative specification, not a tested product transcript. Anthropic says tasks use “the built-in schedule options”, so check the proposed schedule, and the first run, for the day, hour and time zone you meant. The scheduling documentation also says tasks can use configured connectors, plugins and account files. Whether your particular source is available still needs a check in the task's own run.

The first result should identify the newly named training owner and preserve the unknown session date. “Training is arranged” would overstate the source. A useful second test is to add an explicitly cancelled proposal and check that it stays cancelled in the next report.

Give recurring work a small acceptance checklist

Ask for fewer items if the output is long. A three-item brief that changes what you ask on the call is more useful than a complete account of the week that you never read. Keep the source references even when shortening the prose.

Edit, pause and investigate a missing result

Use Scheduled to inspect past and upcoming runs, change instructions or cadence, pause, resume, delete or run on demand. If a report fails, first check source access and whether the task is remote or local, then inspect its run.

When the task succeeds but the report is weak, change one part of the specification at a time. For example, change “summarize the project” to “show changes since the previous Monday,” then compare the next output with the same source pack. Changing the task, sources and schedule together makes it harder to identify what helped.

When you want preparation from selected correspondence

For broader connected work, the Claude setup may fit. Equerry's personal-assistant approach starts with the material you choose to send and a concrete question before a client conversation.

Meeting Prep requires calendar permission and uses the client material you have shared. It does not imply access to an unshared folder or a firm's project system. See the Meeting Prep guide for the narrower job, or ChatGPT scheduled tasks for the corresponding setup there.

Last updated 2026-10-21.

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