Scheduled Tasks

Scheduled tasks let Atlas do things for you automatically at specified times. Set up a morning briefing that runs at 7 AM, a weekly review prompt every Friday afternoon, or a webhook that pings your team’s Slack channel — all without you having to remember to ask.

Note

Scheduled tasks require a Talk plan or active free trial.

How Scheduled Tasks Work

Tasks are defined in a file in your vault:

<vault>/atlas/memory/functions/schedule.md

Atlas checks this file periodically and runs any tasks whose scheduled time has arrived. Each task specifies what to do and when to do it using a cron expression.

The Three Action Types

llm_prompt

Runs an AI conversation with a specified prompt. This is the most common type — use it for things like:

• Morning briefings (“Check my calendar and tasks, give me a summary of today”)
• Daily standup prep (“Summarize what I worked on yesterday”)
• Weekly reviews (“What did I accomplish this week?”)
• Regular reminders (“Remind me to review my goals every Sunday evening”)

The AI response appears as a message in your chat.

webhook

Sends an HTTP request to a URL. Useful for integrating with external services:

• Posting a summary to a Slack channel
• Triggering a Zapier or Make automation
• Calling a custom API endpoint

You specify the URL, HTTP method, headers, and body.

script

Runs a local shell command on your machine. Use with care — this executes directly on your system.

Caution

Script tasks run with your user account’s permissions. Review any script task carefully before enabling it, and only run scripts you wrote yourself or fully understand.

Cron Expression Syntax

Cron expressions define when a task runs using 5 space-separated fields:

minute  hour  day-of-month  month  day-of-week

Field	Range
minute	0–59
hour	0–23
day of month	1–31
month	1–12
day of week	0–6 (0 = Sunday)

Use * to mean “every” for that field.

Common Examples

Cron expression	When it runs
0 7 * * *	Every day at 7:00 AM
0 9 * * 1	Every Monday at 9:00 AM
0 17 * * 5	Every Friday at 5:00 PM
*/30 * * * *	Every 30 minutes
0 8 1 * *	First of every month at 8:00 AM
0 12 * * 1-5	Weekdays at noon

Tip

A cron expression generator (search “cron expression generator” in your browser) makes it easy to build the expression you need without memorizing the syntax.

Security: Tasks Start Disabled

New tasks are created in a disabled state by default. Before a task will run, you must review it and explicitly enable it. This prevents automations from running accidentally or before you’ve had a chance to check what they do.

To enable a task, edit schedule.md and set enabled: true for the task, or ask Atlas: “enable my morning briefing task.”

Execution History

Atlas keeps a log of every time a scheduled task runs, including whether it succeeded, what output it produced, and how long it took. You can view this history by asking Atlas: “show me the execution history for my morning briefing task.”

Logs are stored as JSONL files in your vault and are retained for 30 days by default.

Retry on Failure

If a task fails, Atlas retries it automatically with exponential backoff:

Retry	Delay before retry
1st retry	30 seconds
2nd retry	1 minute
3rd retry	5 minutes
4th retry	15 minutes
5th retry	60 minutes

After 5 failed retries, the task stops trying and logs the failure. You’ll see a notification so you know something went wrong.

Active Hours

Tasks can be limited to run only during your active hours. If a task is configured with active_hours_only: true, it will skip any scheduled run that falls outside your configured active hours (default: 8 AM to 10 PM).

This prevents a task scheduled with */30 * * * * from running every 30 minutes at 3 AM when you’re asleep.

Configure your active hours in Settings > Automation.

---

Next: Reminders