Can Claude Schedule Tasks? Yes, on a Clock (2026)
Yes. On any paid plan, Claude can run a task on a schedule: hourly, daily, weekly or on weekdays. Since October, those tasks run in Anthropic’s cloud, so they keep going with your laptop asleep. What a schedule can’t do is react. “Every morning at 8, summarize my inbox” works. “When a client emails, reply within five minutes” doesn’t, because nothing in your email, calendar or CRM can start a Claude task.
Add the Carly connector and Claude can set up both. Carly runs rules on a clock to the minute, or the moment something happens, across all of your accounts.
How Claude’s scheduled tasks work
Per Anthropic’s guide to scheduled tasks:
- Plans: Pro, Max, Ultra, Team and Enterprise. Not the free plan.
- Where: Claude Cowork and the new combined Claude experience, on desktop, web and mobile.
- How you make one: describe it in a chat (“Every Monday at 9 AM, summarize last week’s messages in my team’s Slack channels”) and click Schedule, or go to Scheduled → New task.
- How often: hourly, daily, weekly, on weekdays, or manually.
- Where it runs: remotely, “even when your computer is asleep or the Claude Desktop app is closed.” A task that needs local files or apps only runs on your computer.
- What it can use: your connectors, skills and plugins, with an approval mode you set per task.
Anthropic’s own examples are a daily briefing, a weekly report, recurring research, folder cleanup and team status updates. Good jobs for a clock.
Where a schedule stops
Most of the work that eats a small business’s day doesn’t arrive on a schedule:
- A lead fills in your form at 2:13pm. An hourly task sees it at 3, if it’s the one that checks forms.
- A client cancels tomorrow’s appointment. Nothing happens until the next run.
- An invoice goes 14 days overdue. A daily task can find it. It can’t know the moment it happened.
- An urgent email lands while you’re in a meeting. The 8am summary tells you about it tomorrow.
ChatGPT's event triggers keep widening, from Gmail, Slack and GitHub to other supported plugins as of September 29, 2026, and the plumbing underneath is still the hard part. A thread on OpenAI's own developer forum documents Gmail and Drive showing as authorized in Settings while conversations report them unavailable at runtime, logged from 28 August to 8 September 2026 with no public fix. Claude's scheduled tasks do not fire on events at all. Carly watches thousands of apps and acts on its own.
Scheduled tasks also work through Claude’s connectors, which hold one Gmail and one Microsoft 365 account. A briefing across your work inbox, your personal Gmail and a client’s Outlook isn’t something a Claude task can build on its own.
Claude scheduled tasks vs Carly
| Claude scheduled tasks | Carly | |
|---|---|---|
| Runs on a schedule | Hourly, daily, weekly, weekdays | Any time you set, to the minute |
| Starts when something happens | No | Yes: new email, form, booking, call, payment, deal stage |
| Runs with your laptop closed | Yes | Yes |
| Email accounts | One Gmail, one Microsoft 365 | Every Gmail and Outlook account |
| Texts, calls and WhatsApps people | No | Yes, from your business number |
| Plans | Paid Claude plans | Free Zapier-style workflows; AI agents from $35/month |
How to set up triggered tasks from Claude
- Connect your apps in Carly. Add your inboxes, calendars and anything else at carlyassistant.com/integrations. Carly connects to thousands of apps.
- Add Carly to Claude. Click Get the Carly connector, then Connect.
- Describe the rule in plain English. Claude builds it through Carly, and Carly runs it in the cloud from then on.
Rules people set up this way:
- “When a new lead fills in my website form, call them within a minute, and text and email if they don’t pick up.”
- “When an email from a client lands in any of my inboxes, text me a one-line summary.”
- “When someone books a call on my calendar, send them a prep email and add them to HubSpot.”
- “Every weekday at 7:45, text me my first three meetings and anything urgent from overnight across all my accounts.”
- “When an invoice in QuickBooks hits 14 days overdue, email the client a polite reminder from my address.”
The routine ones run as free Zapier-style workflows; the ones that need judgment run as an AI agent. Carly follows your rules the same way every time, and it’s best at the work around your inbox, calendar and phone. Get started.
Frequently asked questions
Can Claude run tasks automatically?
Yes, on a schedule. Paid Claude plans run scheduled tasks hourly, daily, weekly or on weekdays, in the cloud. For tasks that should start when something happens, add the Carly connector and set the rule up from Claude.
Do Claude’s scheduled tasks run when my computer is off?
Yes, since Anthropic moved them to remote execution. Anthropic notes that scheduled tasks created before October 6 that run on your computer keep running there, and tasks that need local files or apps only run locally.
Can Claude schedule a task for a specific time?
It schedules by cadence: hourly, daily, weekly or weekdays, with the time described in your prompt. Carly runs rules at any minute you choose, or the second an event happens.
Is scheduling available on Claude’s free plan?
No. Anthropic lists scheduled tasks for Pro, Max, Ultra, Team and Enterprise. Carly’s Zapier-style workflows are free.
Can Claude react to new emails?
Not on its own. No email, calendar or app event can start a Claude task. Carly watches every Gmail and Outlook account you connect and acts the moment mail lands. See Can Claude manage my inbox?
More: Claude automations · Claude automate tasks · Claude Cowork alternatives · Can Claude send emails? · Can Claude make phone calls?
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"Before Carly, I relied on a Calendly link, but the whole process felt impersonal and not very professional. Carly changed that by handling all the back-and-forth, so I'm no longer stuck in endless email threads trying to line up schedules.
Now Carly reaches out to candidates, shares my real-time availability, lets them pick a slot, then sends a Zoom link and drops it straight into my calendar. She sends reminders to both of us before each call, which has significantly reduced no-shows and last-minute confusion.
On top of scheduling, Carly acts like a full executive assistant, sending me my schedule the night before so I can prepare for each call. It reminds me of the old x.ai assistant, but Carly is noticeably smarter, faster, and better suited to my healthcare recruitment business."
