Scheduled Tasks & Cron — Give Your AI Agent a Schedule

What Scheduled Tasks (Cron) Mean for an AI Agent

“Cron” is the classic name for a recurring job scheduler — the term comes from Unix, wherecron runs a command at fixed times. For a hosted AI agent, a scheduled task is the same idea applied to an agent turn instead of a shell command: instead of waiting for you to send a message, the agent wakes itself up at a set time (or interval), does the work you asked for, and delivers the result — to a chat channel, or wherever you told it to send it.

OpenClaw ships a built-in scheduler for exactly this. It supports one-shot jobs (run once at a given time), fixed intervals (“every 1h”), and standard cron expressions (5- or 6-field, e.g. 0 9 * * 1 for “every Monday at 9am”). Jobs persist across restarts, so a schedule you set up today keeps firing tomorrow without you having to re-create it.

Why Hosting Matters — 24/7 Instance vs a Laptop That Sleeps

A scheduler is only as reliable as the machine running it. Cron on your own laptop is a well-known trap: the job is defined correctly, but it silently never runs because the laptop was asleep, closed, off Wi-Fi, or shut down over the weekend. The 8am digest you set up never arrives, and you don't find out until you notice the gap.

An OpenClaw Launch instance runs in a container on a server that is up continuously — not tied to your laptop's power state or your home network. The scheduler lives inside that same always-on container, so a job set to fire at 8am fires at 8am whether you're asleep, on a flight, or your own machine is off. This is the practical reason to host an agent's schedule rather than run it locally: reliability of the when, not just the what.

Example Scheduled Jobs

• Daily digest — “Every weekday at 8am, summarize my inbox and message me the highlights.” Runs once a day, delivers a short summary to your chat channel before you've had coffee.
• Hourly monitor — “Check this page every hour and tell me if the price changes.” A fixed-interval job that watches something external and only bothers you when there's something to report.
• Reminders — “Remind me every Friday at 4pm to send the weekly update.” A simple recurring nudge, delivered straight to the channel you already talk to the agent in.
• Recurring reports — “Every Monday morning, pull last week's numbers and send me a report.” A weekly cron expression that produces a consistent, dated summary you can build a routine around.

How to Set One Up

Because your agent runs inside its own container, the most direct way to set up a schedule is conversational: tell the agent what you want and when, in plain language — “every morning at 8am, summarize my inbox and message me” — and it can create the job for you. For operators or anyone who wants direct control, the same scheduling surface is also reachable as a command inside the instance, letting you list, edit, or remove jobs explicitly rather than only through chat.

1. Open your instance — Go to openclawlaunch.com, sign in, and open the instance you want to schedule a job on from your dashboard. A free trial is available if you don't have one running yet.
2. Ask the agent to schedule it — In the chat channel you already use (web, Telegram, Discord, etc.), describe the job in plain language: what to do, and when or how often. Include any detail that matters, like which channel to send the result to.
3. Confirm the schedule — The agent should confirm the job is scheduled and tell you the next run time. If the wording is ambiguous (say, a time without a timezone), be explicit — spell out the timezone so the schedule lands on the wall-clock time you actually meant.
4. Let it run — Because the instance stays up, the job fires on its own schedule going forward. You don't need to keep a browser tab open or your own machine running.
5. Adjust or remove later — Ask the agent to change the time, the recipient, or the content, or to cancel the job entirely, the same way you set it up.

Tips

• Be explicit about timezone. A schedule described without a timezone can default to the server's own clock (commonly UTC), which may not match your local time. Say “8am Eastern” or “8am UTC” rather than just “8am” if the exact hour matters.
• Design idempotent jobs. A recurring job should be safe to run more than once for the same period — e.g. a digest that summarizes “since the last run” rather than one that assumes it only ever fires exactly once. This matters if a run is retried or triggered manually for testing.
• Say where the result should go. Tell the agent which channel to deliver the output to (the same chat, a specific channel, etc.) so a daily digest doesn't get lost in the wrong place.
• Start with one job before stacking many. Get the wording, timing, and delivery right on a single schedule first, then add more once you trust the pattern.

Related Guides

• Run an AI Agent 24/7 — why an always-on hosted instance changes what an agent can do
• Coding Workspace Hosting — a hosted cloud dev box for AI coding CLIs
• What is OpenClaw? — the open-source project behind these hosted agents
• OpenClaw Launch hosting plans — pricing and feature details
• Pricing — plans and free trial details

Frequently Asked Questions

Can an AI agent really run on a schedule, not just reply to messages?

Yes. OpenClaw includes a built-in scheduler that can fire an agent turn at a specific time, on a fixed interval, or on a cron expression, independent of any incoming message. The result of that run can then be delivered to a chat channel, so a scheduled job looks like the agent messaging you proactively.

What happens if my computer is off when a scheduled job is supposed to run?

Nothing changes, because the schedule lives on the hosted instance, not your computer. The instance runs in a server-side container that stays up continuously, so a job set for 8am fires at 8am regardless of whether your own laptop or phone is on.

How do I create a scheduled job?

Tell your agent what to do and when, in plain language, in the same chat channel you already use — for example, “every weekday at 8am, summarize my inbox and message me.” The same scheduling surface is also reachable as an explicit command inside the instance for anyone who wants direct control over listing, editing, or removing jobs.

Do scheduled jobs survive a restart?

Yes. Scheduled jobs are persisted, not held only in memory, so they keep firing on their configured schedule across restarts of the instance.

Does OpenClaw Launch charge extra for scheduled tasks?

Scheduled tasks are part of the same hosted instance you already pay for — there's no separate add-on fee. A free trial is available so you can try setting up a schedule before subscribing; see pricing for plan details.