Claude Cowork: AI for Everyday Work/Work That Runs Without You
Lesson 2 / 4 · 10 min
Course contents
Walkthrough

Scheduled Tasks

Work that runs at 6am Monday without you: recurring reports, monitors, and follow-ups.

Scheduled tasks run server-side — no device online, no laptop open. That makes Cowork the first assistant that genuinely works while you sleep. The recipe below builds the classic: a Monday-morning report that's waiting before you are.

Steps · 0 / 4 done

  1. Prove the task works on demand

    Never schedule an unproven task. Run it manually first and review the output.

    prompt
    Compile a Monday briefing: last week's numbers from metrics.xlsx, top 3 items from my starred emails, and this week's calendar highlights. One page, sections in that order, save as monday-briefing.md.
    VerifyThe briefing generates correctly on demand and the format matches what you want every week.

  2. Schedule it

    Once the on-demand run is right, add the schedule.

    prompt
    Run this every Monday at 6:00 AM. Save each briefing as monday-briefing-[date].md and notify me when it's ready.
    VerifyThe task appears in your scheduled tasks list with the right cadence.

  3. Add a conditional follow-up

    Schedules aren't just calendars — they can watch and react. The pattern: check for a condition, act when it's met.

    prompt
    Starting tomorrow at 9:00 AM, check hourly whether the vendor has replied to my quote request. When they reply, summarize their answer into vendor-quotes.md and notify me.
    VerifyThe monitor is listed; when the condition fires, you get one notification with the summary — not hourly noise.

  4. Review the first two scheduled runs

    Scheduled work drifts: data moves, formats change, an assumption expires. Read the first two automated outputs as carefully as the manual one, then relax to spot-checks.

    VerifyTwo consecutive scheduled runs produced correct output without intervention.
Check your understanding
Q1. Why must a scheduled task be run manually first?
· Tick off the 4 step(s) above.
· Score 100% on the quiz.