Anthropic has shipped native scheduled task support for Claude Code, letting the AI coding agent run prompts on recurring cron schedules without anyone at the keyboard. The feature, available now in the Claude Desktop app, allows users to configure tasks that fire hourly, daily, or weekly, with Claude Code operating against any project files and MCP tools in its environment. Only desktop app users can access the capability for now. Terminal and IDE extensions don't support it yet.
The Breakdown
- Claude Code now runs scheduled tasks via the desktop app, firing hourly, daily, or weekly without human input
- Tasks are agentic and self-correcting, unlike deterministic cron jobs that stop on errors
- Each run is stateless by default, but a single state file per task provides continuity between executions
- Desktop app must stay open for cron to fire; terminal and IDE support not yet available
How scheduled tasks work
Setup takes about a minute. Users open the schedule tab in the desktop app, name the task, write a prompt, select a model, choose a project folder, and set a frequency. Typing /schedule inside any existing Claude Code session works too.
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