Scenario: Scheduled Tasks & Automation Workflows
When you schedule recurring tasks, the agent executes them at the specified times or intervals. The agent handles daily news summaries, weekly reports, and regular file cleanup automatically.
🎯 Objectives
- Automate daily and weekly recurring tasks with a single setup.
- Generate reports, summaries, and maintenance jobs without manual checks.
- Build multi-agent automation workflows across distributed sessions.
📋 Step-by-Step Guide
Step 1: Define Tasks to Automate
Identify your recurring tasks clearly. Set daily, weekly, or monthly intervals.
Daily task examples:
- Every day at 09:00: Summarize top 10 AI news articles.
- Every day at 18:00: Summarize incoming emails received today.
- Every day at 00:00: Clean up the downloads folder.Weekly task examples:
- Every Monday at 10:00: Generate the weekly project report.
- Every Friday at 17:00: Summarize meeting notes from this week.Monthly task examples:
- On the 1st of every month: Generate the monthly sales report.
- On the last Friday of every month: Organize the code review schedule.Step 2: Instruct and Schedule the Agent
Provide the task details and the schedule frequency to the agent.
Basic schedule request:
Schedule the following task every day at 09:00:
- Search for 10 recent AI news articles.
- Generate a one-line summary for each article.
- Include source links.
- Save results to 'daily-reports/ai-news-{date}.md'.Complex schedule request:
Run the following workflow every Monday at 10:00:
1. Check Git commit logs from the previous week.
2. Summarize key changes.
3. Organize contributions by team member.
4. Save the weekly report to 'weekly-reports/weekly-{date}.md'.Multi-agent coordination:
Configure this multi-agent automation pipeline:
- Daily at 08:00: Ask 'Research Agent' for an AI news report.
- Daily at 09:00: Ask 'Translation Agent' to translate the report into Korean.
- Daily at 10:00: Save the final report to 'reports/ko/'.Step 3: Inspect and Update Schedules
You can view active tasks and modify them at any time.
List active tasks:
Show all currently scheduled automation tasks.
Summarize the execution time and content for each task.(The agent calls scheduled_task__list automatically to inspect active jobs.)
Modify a schedule:
Change the execution time of the daily 09:00 AI news report to 14:00.Pause or remove a schedule:
Pause the weekly Monday report schedule temporarily.(To remove an existing task completely, the agent uses scheduled_task__delete.)
Step 4: Verify Task Execution
Inspect the outputs generated by the automated agent.
Request verification:
Check all automated reports generated during the past week.
Summarize which reports were created.Check error reports:
Check if any automated tasks failed recently.
If a task failed, show the root cause and the recommended fix.💡 Example Prompt Collection
| Purpose | Prompt |
|---|---|
| Daily news summary | "Summarize top 10 AI news articles daily at 09:00 with source links." |
| Weekly report | "Generate a weekly Git commit analysis report every Monday at 10:00." |
| File cleanup | "Find and remove duplicate files in ./downloads/ every Friday at 17:00." |
| Email summary | "Summarize all incoming emails daily at 08:00." |
| Data backup | "Create a backup of ./data/ into ./backups/ every midnight." |
| Review reminder | "Send a reminder for pending code reviews every Wednesday at 15:00." |
| System monitoring | "Check system resource usage hourly and notify if it exceeds 80%." |
| Learning report | "Generate a summary report of topics learned this week every Sunday at 18:00." |
⏰ Schedule Frequency Guide
Daily Execution
Best suited for:
- News summaries and daily status reports.
- Routine file cleanup and local backups.
- Email and inbox notifications triage.
Example prompt:
Execute the following task every day at 09:00 UTC:
1. Search for 10 recent AI news articles.
2. Provide a one-line summary for each article.
3. Save results to daily-reports/{date}.md.Weekly Execution
Best suited for:
- Weekly status reports and Git commit analytics.
- Meeting minutes consolidation.
- Weekly metric and KPI dashboards.
Example prompt:
Run this task every Monday at 10:00:
1. Review Git commits from last week.
2. Summarize key modifications.
3. Save the report to weekly-reports/.Monthly Execution
Best suited for:
- Monthly sales and performance reviews.
- Code quality and technical debt assessments.
- System audit checks.
Example prompt:
Run this task on the 1st of every month at 10:00:
1. Collect Git statistics from the past month.
2. Generate the monthly overview report.
3. Include member contribution breakdown.Interval Execution
Best suited for:
- Continuous service monitoring.
- Periodic error log inspection.
- Database and cache synchronization.
Example prompt:
Check the following items every hour at minute 0:
- Web service response latency.
- Recent error log spikes.
- Send an alert if anomalies are detected.⚙️ Configuration Tips
Create a Dedicated Automation Assistant
Use a dedicated agent profile for automated tasks:
- Open
/assistantsand select New Assistant. - Name:
"Automation Assistant"or"Scheduled Agent". - System prompt:
You are an automated task execution assistant. Execute scheduled jobs accurately and quickly. Record results clearly and report root causes upon failure. - Enable only the required tools to minimize cognitive overhead.
Configure Failure Policies
Define error handling behavior explicitly:
When running automated tasks:
- Save error details to 'errors/' if a failure occurs.
- Provide a summary of failed tasks every morning.
- Send an urgent notification if critical tasks fail.Resource Management
Prevent excessive concurrent background tasks:
When setting up automated tasks:
- Distribute schedules across different time slots.
- Schedule heavy CPU or memory jobs during off-peak hours.
- Limit concurrent active tasks to a maximum of 3.📊 Automation Dashboard
You can ask the agent to summarize all active automation jobs in a structured dashboard:
Show all configured automation tasks in a dashboard table:
- Task Name
- Schedule Interval / Cron
- Last Run Time
- Recent Failure Status
- Next Scheduled Run🔗 Related Documentation
- Playbooks Guide — Save repeatable workflows into playbooks
- Assistants Guide — Configure dedicated automation agents
- Deep Research Scenario — Connect automation to scheduled research pipelines
🚀 Next Steps
| Project | Description | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|
| Daily News Digest | Summarize AI news every morning | ⭐⭐ |
| Weekly Git Report | Generate weekly commit analytics | ⭐⭐⭐ |
| Automated Cleanup | Clean downloads directory on schedule | ⭐⭐ |
| Email Summary | Summarize daily morning emails | ⭐⭐ |
| Automated Backup | Configure periodic data directory backups | ⭐⭐ |
| Multi-Agent Pipeline | Connect multiple agents into one pipeline | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| Failure Notifications | Receive instant alerts on job errors | ⭐⭐ |
| Automation Monitor | Build a status dashboard for tasks | ⭐⭐⭐ |