[Docs index](/docs.md) / [Subagents](/docs/subagents/overview.md) / Scheduling a Subagent --- # Scheduling a Subagent A subagent on a schedule runs on its own at the time you specify, executes a saved prompt, and logs the result. This is how you turn a manual workflow ("every morning I open the support digest agent and ask it to run") into something the team can rely on without anyone remembering to trigger it. ## Before you begin - The subagent you want to schedule must already exist. See [Creating a subagent](./creating-a-subagent.md). - You need access to the AI chat. - The subagent should be able to do the work on its own. If it normally needs you to answer a clarifying question mid-run, refine the system prompt and the tool whitelist before scheduling — a scheduled run cannot ask you for input. ## Steps ### 1. Open a chat with the agent From the **Subagents** page, click the chat icon on the agent's card. This opens a conversation with that specific agent. You can also schedule from the main chat by naming the agent, but doing it from inside the agent's own chat keeps things unambiguous. ### 2. Ask to schedule the prompt Use a prompt that includes the four things a schedule needs: what to do, how often, what time, and which timezone. > "Schedule yourself to run every weekday at 8:00 AM America/New_York with the prompt: 'Pull yesterday's support tickets, group by severity, and post the summary to the #support-ops Slack channel.' Call the trigger 'Daily Support Digest'." Other examples: > "Schedule a weekly run on Monday at 7:00 AM America/Chicago with the prompt 'Generate the weekly AR aging summary from NetSuite and email it to finance@company.com.' Call it 'Weekly AR Aging'." > "Schedule a one-time run for next Friday at 5:00 PM UTC with the prompt 'Run the end-of-quarter inventory snapshot and save it to the filesystem as /snapshots/q1-final.md.'" The agent confirms the schedule it is about to create and asks you to approve. ### 3. Confirm the trigger Approve the schedule. The agent creates a trigger on itself and tells you when the next run will be. ### 4. Verify the trigger appears on the agent Go back to **Subagents**. The agent's card now shows a trigger indicator and lists the schedule (for example, "schedule (daily) — Daily Support Digest"). ### 5. Watch the first run When the scheduled time arrives, the trigger fires. To inspect what happened, open **Agent Tasks** in the left navigation (or go to `/agent-tasks`). Each scheduled run shows up there with: - Status: success, failure, or partial. - Duration. - A full execution log you can drill into. - Any tool calls the agent made. If the run failed, open the log to see why. The most common causes are tools that need a credential the agent does not have access to, or a prompt that depended on something only present during your interactive session. ## Managing schedules You can ask the agent to manage its own triggers in chat: > "List your scheduled tasks." > "Disable the Daily Support Digest trigger." > "Change the Weekly AR Aging trigger to run at 6:00 AM Central instead of 7:00 AM." These are first-class tool calls and the agent returns confirmation when each one completes. ## Notifications Scheduled runs can post their results to Slack. Failed runs send an immediate message; successful and partial runs are batched into hourly digests. To enable Slack notifications, your workspace must have Slack connected and your user profile must have a Slack identity connected. Talk to your workspace admin if this is not set up. ## Notes and limitations - **No mid-run prompts.** A scheduled run cannot ask you a clarifying question. Build the prompt so the agent has everything it needs. - **Time zones.** Always specify a timezone in your scheduling prompt. If you omit one, the agent will guess based on workspace defaults, and it may not guess what you expect. - **Repeated failures.** A trigger that fails several times in a row may be flagged. Check **Agent Tasks** if you stop seeing runs you expected. - **Idempotency is on you.** If the prompt creates an entity (a ticket, a row, an email), make sure the prompt or the tools handle the case where the same trigger has already fired today. Scheduled runs do not deduplicate for you. ## Next steps - [Routing channels to a subagent](./routing-channels-to-a-subagent.md) - [Use cases and playbooks](./use-cases.md) - [Troubleshooting](./troubleshooting.md) --- ## Navigation ### In this section: Subagents - [Subagents](/docs/subagents/overview.md) - [Use Cases and Playbooks](/docs/subagents/use-cases.md) - [Troubleshooting](/docs/subagents/troubleshooting.md) - [Adding Tools to a Subagent](/docs/subagents/adding-tools-to-a-subagent.md) - [Creating a Subagent](/docs/subagents/creating-a-subagent.md) - [Delegating to a Subagent](/docs/subagents/delegating-to-a-subagent.md) - [Managing Subagent Access](/docs/subagents/managing-subagent-access.md) - [Routing Channels to a Subagent](/docs/subagents/routing-channels-to-a-subagent.md) - **Scheduling a Subagent** (current) #### Playbooks - [Playbook: Build a Shared Toolbox for Your Organization](/docs/subagents/playbook-organization-toolbox.md) - [Playbook: Build a Tier-1 Support Triage Subagent](/docs/subagents/playbook-tier-1-support-triage.md) - [Playbook: Build a Vendor Intake Coordinator](/docs/subagents/playbook-vendor-intake-coordinator.md) - [Playbook: Build an Ops Channel Concierge in Slack](/docs/subagents/playbook-ops-channel-concierge.md) - [Playbook: Build an Overnight Reconciliation Agent](/docs/subagents/playbook-overnight-reconciliation-agent.md) ### Other sections - [MCP Servers](/docs/mcp-servers/overview.md) - [Tool Creation](/docs/tool-creation/overview.md) - [Agent Filesystem](/docs/agent-filesystem/overview.md) - [Chat Sharing](/docs/chat-sharing/overview.md) - [Scheduled Triggers](/docs/scheduled-triggers/overview.md) - [Agent Skills](/docs/agent-skills/overview.md) - [Sandcastles](/docs/sandcastles/overview.md) - [Workspace Permissions](/docs/workspace-permissions/overview.md) [Back to docs index](/docs.md)