routine-setup

Routine Setup

Claude Routines run on Anthropic's infrastructure. They fire whether your laptop is on or off. Use them for:

• Daily/weekly recurring tasks where reliability matters more than frequency.
• GitHub-event-triggered tasks (PR opened, release cut).
• Anything where "what if my Mac is asleep at 9am?" is a real worry.

Don't use them for:

• Tasks more frequent than hourly (Routines have a 1-hour minimum).
• Tasks that need local Bash, local files, or local MCP servers (those need the gateway daemon — see cron-routine skill).
• Tasks that would burn your daily quota (Pro: 5/day, Max: 15, Team/Enterprise: 25).

Procedure

1. Confirm the user wants Routines, not local cron

If the user just said "schedule X every day", ask once:

"Run this on Anthropic's cloud (fires even when your Mac is off, daily quota, 1h minimum interval) or on your local gateway daemon (no quota, sub-minute granularity, needs your machine on)?"

Default to Routine if the cadence is daily/weekly and the prompt is self-contained (no local file or local MCP needed). Default to local otherwise.

If they're indifferent — pick the better fit and tell them which you chose.

2. Compose a self-contained prompt

A Routine has no memory of past runs. Each fire is a fresh session. The prompt must include everything Claude needs to do the job:

• The actual task ("Summarize my unread Gmail and send to Telegram chat 123…").
• Any tool / MCP it should use (Routines can attach connectors — Slack, Linear, Google Drive, GitHub).
• The output format and delivery target.

Bad prompt: "Run the morning-brief skill." Good prompt: "Pull today's events from Google Calendar, top 5 unread important emails from Gmail, and open PRs assigned to me from GitHub. Format as the morning-brief template (calendar / inbox / PRs / suggested first move). Send the result to Telegram chat 123456789 via the message-send tool."

3. Invoke the schedule skill

Claude Code has a built-in schedule skill that creates Claude Routines via CronCreate. Invoke it with:

• name: kebab-case, e.g. morning-brief-routine
• cron expression: translate from English ("every weekday at 9am" → 0 9 * * 1-5)
• timezone: from USER.md (default Europe/Amsterdam)
• prompt: the self-contained prompt from step 2
• connectors: any MCP servers the task needs (Slack/Linear/Gmail/Calendar — surface what the user has)

After creation, list with CronList to confirm.

4. Mirror to HEARTBEAT.md

Append a row to ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/identity/HEARTBEAT.md under "Current schedule" tagged (routine) so the human-readable view shows both local and cloud schedules in one place:

| Daily 09:00 | morning-brief | Telegram | (routine) |

Common patterns to suggest

When the user asks "what should I set up", offer these (don't auto-create):

• morning-brief-routine — daily 09:00 → Telegram (high value, low frequency, perfect routine fit)
• weekly-recap-routine — Friday 17:00 → email or Slack (reliability matters here)
• github-pr-review-routine — on PR opened in priority repos → run code-review skill, post comment
• monday-week-plan-routine — Monday 08:00 → summarize last week's commits, propose this week's focus, deliver to pending

For sub-hourly or local-only tasks, point at the cron-routine skill (local daemon) instead.

Listing & managing existing routines

• List all: CronList — shows everything you've scheduled. Filter to claudeclaw-created ones by name prefix claw- (we add this prefix on create).
• Run now: if Claude Code surfaces the option, the user can fire a routine immediately for testing.
• Delete: CronDelete <id>.
• Update: mcp__scheduled-tasks__update_scheduled_task — change schedule or prompt without recreating.

Quota awareness

If the user already has 4+ active routines and they're on Pro (5/day cap), warn: "you're near the daily quota — consider whether this is worth replacing an existing one, or moving to local cron."