Scheduled tasks require Claude Code v2.1.72 or later. Check your version with claude --version.
Schedule a recurring prompt with /loop
The /loop bundled skill is the quickest way to schedule a recurring prompt. Pass an optional interval and a prompt, and Claude sets up a cron job that fires in the background while the session stays open.
/loop 5m check if the deployment finished and tell me what happened
Interval syntax
Intervals are optional. You can lead with them, trail with them, or leave them out entirely.
| Form | Example | Parsed interval |
|---|
| Leading token | /loop 30m check the build | every 30 minutes |
Trailing every clause | /loop check the build every 2 hours | every 2 hours |
| No interval | /loop check the build | defaults to every 10 minutes |
s for seconds, m for minutes, h for hours, and d for days. Seconds are rounded up to the nearest minute since cron has one-minute granularity. Intervals that don’t divide evenly into their unit, such as 7m or 90m, are rounded to the nearest clean interval and Claude tells you what it picked.
Loop over another command
The scheduled prompt can itself be a command or skill invocation. This is useful for re-running a workflow you’ve already packaged.
/loop 20m /review-pr 1234
/review-pr 1234 as if you had typed it.
Set a one-time reminder
For one-shot reminders, describe what you want in natural language instead of using /loop. Claude schedules a single-fire task that deletes itself after running.
remind me at 3pm to push the release branch
in 45 minutes, check whether the integration tests passed
Manage scheduled tasks
Ask Claude in natural language to list or cancel tasks, or reference the underlying tools directly.
what scheduled tasks do I have?
cancel the deploy check job
| Tool | Purpose |
|---|
CronCreate | Schedule a new task. Accepts a 5-field cron expression, the prompt to run, and whether it recurs or fires once. |
CronList | List all scheduled tasks with their IDs, schedules, and prompts. |
CronDelete | Cancel a task by ID. |
CronDelete. A session can hold up to 50 scheduled tasks at once.
How scheduled tasks run
The scheduler checks every second for due tasks and enqueues them at low priority. A scheduled prompt fires between your turns, not while Claude is mid-response. If Claude is busy when a task comes due, the prompt waits until the current turn ends.
All times are interpreted in your local timezone. A cron expression like 0 9 * * * means 9am wherever you’re running Claude Code, not UTC.
Jitter
To avoid every session hitting the API at the same wall-clock moment, the scheduler adds a small deterministic offset to fire times:
- Recurring tasks fire up to 10% of their period late, capped at 15 minutes. An hourly job might fire anywhere from
:00 to :06.
- One-shot tasks scheduled for the top or bottom of the hour fire up to 90 seconds early.
The offset is derived from the task ID, so the same task always gets the same offset. If exact timing matters, pick a minute that is not :00 or :30, for example 3 9 * * * instead of 0 9 * * *, and the one-shot jitter will not apply.
Three-day expiry
Recurring tasks automatically expire 3 days after creation. The task fires one final time, then deletes itself. This bounds how long a forgotten loop can run. If you need a recurring task to last longer, cancel and recreate it before it expires, or use Desktop scheduled tasks for durable scheduling.
Cron expression reference
CronCreate accepts standard 5-field cron expressions: minute hour day-of-month month day-of-week. All fields support wildcards (*), single values (5), steps (*/15), ranges (1-5), and comma-separated lists (1,15,30).
| Example | Meaning |
|---|
*/5 * * * * | Every 5 minutes |
0 * * * * | Every hour on the hour |
7 * * * * | Every hour at 7 minutes past |
0 9 * * * | Every day at 9am local |
0 9 * * 1-5 | Weekdays at 9am local |
30 14 15 3 * | March 15 at 2:30pm local |
0 or 7 for Sunday through 6 for Saturday. Extended syntax like L, W, ?, and name aliases such as MON or JAN is not supported.
When both day-of-month and day-of-week are constrained, a date matches if either field matches. This follows standard vixie-cron semantics.
Disable scheduled tasks
Set CLAUDE_CODE_DISABLE_CRON=1 in your environment to disable the scheduler entirely. The cron tools and /loop become unavailable, and any already-scheduled tasks stop firing. See Environment variables for the full list of disable flags.
Limitations
Session-scoped scheduling has inherent constraints:
- Tasks only fire while Claude Code is running and idle. Closing the terminal or letting the session exit cancels everything.
- No catch-up for missed fires. If a task’s scheduled time passes while Claude is busy on a long-running request, it fires once when Claude becomes idle, not once per missed interval.
- No persistence across restarts. Restarting Claude Code clears all session-scoped tasks.
For cron-driven automation that needs to run unattended, use a GitHub Actions workflow with a schedule trigger, or Desktop scheduled tasks if you want a graphical setup flow.
