> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.cogniagent.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# Schedules
> Set your AI coworker running every weekday at nine — a morning briefing, a weekly report, a nightly check — without asking each time.
Work that should just happen, on a timetable, without you asking each time.
## What it does
Give a coworker a recurring task — a morning inbox triage, a weekly report — and it starts the work on time without a prompt. The result is waiting when you get in.
Schedules live on the coworker's **Schedules** tab.
## Setting one up
**Every day**, **Weekdays**, or **Weekly**. Weekly asks which day.
In your own timezone, which is shown next to the field so there's no ambiguity.
What your coworker should do each time. The field's own example is a good model:
> Triage the support inbox and draft replies for anything urgent.
Each schedule has a switch, so you can pause one for a while without deleting it.
## Writing a good scheduled task
A scheduled task runs without you there to clarify, so it has to stand on its own.
**Write it as a complete instruction.** "The usual report" means nothing at 7am on a Tuesday with no conversation behind it.
**Say what to do when there's nothing to do.** A quiet inbox should produce "nothing needing you today", not a report padded out to look busy.
**Say where the result goes.** Otherwise it sits in a task you have to remember to open. Pair it with [Talking to people](/cowork/capabilities/talking-to-people) or a Slack connection and it can send you the summary directly.
**Run it manually once first.** Paste the same instruction into a normal task and see what comes back. Much easier to fix at 3pm than to debug from tomorrow's output.
## When you'd use one
* A morning briefing on what needs you today
* A weekly report assembled from the same sources each Monday
* A nightly check that something ran, with a message only if it didn't
* A daily scrape of a portal that has no other way out
* A Friday summary of the week's numbers
* A recurring reminder that does the preparation, not just the reminding
## Schedules, self-scheduling, or keep working?
Three different things, easily confused.
| | What it is | Who decides |
| ----------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------- | ---------------------- |
| **Schedules** | Recurring work, starting on its own | You, in advance |
| **[Self-scheduling](/cowork/capabilities/self-scheduling)** | Coming back to a task it's already on | The coworker, mid-task |
| **[Keep working](/cowork/autonomy/keep-working)** | Pushing through one long job now | You, in the moment |
## Good to know
Each run is its own task, so you get a clean history rather than one conversation growing forever.
A coworker can pause its own schedule if the task can't be done as written — and it tells you why on the schedule row, so a broken schedule doesn't fail silently every morning.
A paused coworker doesn't run its schedules. If a morning report has gone quiet, check the coworker is enabled before checking the schedule.
## Common questions
Yours — the one shown when you set the schedule. Editing from somewhere else re-stamps it to where you are then, so check the field if you travel.
Yes. A morning triage and a Friday report on the same coworker is a normal setup.
The schedule keeps its place and the row shows what went wrong. One bad morning doesn't stop tomorrow's.
Yes — each run is a task you can open and read in full, like any other.
The switch on its row. It stops running and keeps its settings for when you switch it back on.
## Next steps
Everything that runs without you.
When the coworker decides instead.
Getting the result sent to you.
What a schedule produced.