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The point of a coworker isn’t that it’s fast while you watch. It’s that things get done while you don’t.

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The four ways

Each answers a different question about when work happens.

Schedules

Recurring work on a timetable. A morning briefing, a Friday report. You decide, in advance.

Keep working

Push through one long job in a single run instead of check-in-sized pieces. You decide, in the moment.

Self-scheduling

Come back to a task later — when a reply lands, when a process finishes. The coworker decides, mid-task.

Message channels

Someone messages it in Slack or email and it just gets on with it. Someone else starts it.

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What stays true when you’re not there

This is the part worth being clear about, because “autonomous” makes people nervous, and it should mean unattended, not unchecked. Approvals still pause. Anything leaving your workspace waits for your yes, however long you take. A coworker working overnight doesn’t send the email at 3am because you were asleep — it waits. Permission rules still apply. Nothing is relaxed because nobody’s watching. Everything is on the record. Every step it took while you were away is in the conversation, in order, with a notice explaining why it woke up and what it did.
A notice in the conversation explaining that the coworker resumed because a deploy finished

A quiet line in the conversation saying why it picked the work up again. Expand it for the full account.

It stops rather than guesses. When it hits something it can’t resolve, it waits for you instead of picking an answer.

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Building up to it

Nobody should hand a coworker unattended work on day one. A reasonable progression:
1

Watch it do the job

Run the task manually a few times and read what it does. You’re learning where it’s reliable.
2

Tighten the brief

Whatever you found yourself correcting goes into its instructions or a skill.
3

Set the boundaries

Write the permission rules that matter — especially the “never” ones.
4

Schedule it

Now let it run on its own, and read the first few results properly.
The step people skip is the third one. Ten minutes writing “never delete anything” and “never email outside the company” is what makes the rest comfortable.

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Good to know

A paused coworker doesn’t do any of this — no schedules fire and no channels listen. It’s the single switch that stops everything.
Work done while you were away is normal work. It shows up in your tasks and on the coworker’s Activity tab like anything else.

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Common questions

Only where you’ve allowed it. The default pauses sends, changes and deletions for your approval — see Approvals.
The conversation has everything, and a notice explains why it woke up. Have it message you the summary with Talking to people if you’d rather not go looking.
It stops and says so rather than pressing on. You’ll find the task waiting with an explanation.
Only in the sense that more work happens. Waiting is free — a coworker sitting between check-ins costs nothing.

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Next steps

Schedules

Work on a timetable.

Permission rules

Set the boundaries first.

Keep working

One long run.

How a coworker gets better

Why it needs you less over time.