Scheduled Tasks
Cowork while you're not looking.
Dispatch is for things you start. Brain dump is for things you sort. Scheduled Tasks is for things that just happen — Cowork running on its own clock, doing things you've set up once, no nudge required.
Set up a Sunday brain dump kickoff so it asks you for your week ahead without you having to remember. Set up a Friday afternoon recap of the week. Set up a daily morning summary of anything new in your Project. Set up a curated morning briefing pulling from a handful of accounts you follow on X — and just ask Claude what it'd need to pull that together for you. Once they're scheduled, you stop being the one initiating — Cowork does.
The reality check that comes with this.
Scheduled tasks run on your computer, not in Anthropic's cloud. Your laptop has to be awake and Claude Desktop has to be running at the scheduled time. If you'll lean on scheduled tasks at hours when your laptop is usually closed, Amphetamine (Mac) or Caffeine / PowerToys Awake (Windows) — from the Pro & Cowork setup lesson — keep your computer from sleeping while it's plugged in, lid closed and all.
Set up your first scheduled task.
Scheduled tasks live inside a Project — so any task you schedule runs with that Project's files, instructions, and context. Most of yours will live in Family Manager.
Open Family Manager, start a new chat, and tell Cowork what you want:
Cowork creates the scheduled task and shows you the details — when it runs, what it does, where it lives. If anything is off, just tell Cowork what to change ("make it 5pm instead," "ask me a question first to make sure I'm available before kicking off"), and Cowork updates the task.
Two other ways to set them up.
- Type
/scheduleinside any Cowork task to open a scheduling form. - Click "Scheduled" in the left sidebar of Claude Desktop to see all your scheduled tasks and add new ones from there.
The tell-Cowork pattern (just describing what you want) usually gets you there fastest. The other two are there if you want a UI to click through.
A few more worth setting up now.
You already set up the Sunday brain dump. Here are two more that work with what you have today — Family Manager and the brain dump system. Phase 4 modules will add more (morning email brief, monthly money scan, dashboard redeploy) once those Projects exist.
A Friday afternoon recap.
Cowork looks at what's in Family Manager from the past week and writes you a short recap — what got done, what's still hanging, what's coming up. Good lead-in to your Sunday brain dump.
A weekday morning check-in.
Quick daily start — what's on today's calendar (you'll add real calendar access in Phase 4's Email & Calendar module), what's at the top of current-week-priorities, anything that needs your attention this morning.
What's coming in Phase 4
Several of the most useful scheduled tasks need Projects you haven't built yet. The Email & Calendar module adds the morning email brief (Cowork reads overnight emails, flags the ones that need your attention). The Money & Bills module adds the monthly money scan. Each module's lesson sets up its own scheduled task. By the end of Phase 4, you've got a handful of recurring things running on their own.
See, change, and stop your scheduled tasks.
All your scheduled tasks live under Scheduled in the Claude Desktop sidebar. Click it to see the full list — what each one does, when it runs, which Project it's scoped to.
How to change a task
The fastest way is just to tell Cowork. Inside the relevant Project:
- "Change my Friday recap task to run at 4pm instead of 3pm."
- "Stop the morning check-in task — I want a break for the summer."
- "Pause all scheduled tasks in Family Manager for the next two weeks."
You can also edit them directly from the Scheduled tab in the sidebar — same as setting them up, just clicking through the UI instead of describing what you want.
One thing worth knowing about deleted tasks
When you tell Cowork to delete a scheduled task, the task and its run history get removed from your task list right away. Per Anthropic's data retention policy, the underlying data is removed from their backend storage within 30 days. So "delete" really does mean gone, not hidden — handy if you set up a task that ends up not fitting and want it cleared.
Next: Build Your Family Dashboard.
One lesson left in Phase 3. You've got Family Manager, the brain dump pattern feeding current-week-priorities, a meal plan in current-week-meals, scheduled tasks running on their own. Next we build the dashboard that ties it all together into one view you actually look at.
Continue to Build Your Family Dashboard →