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 daily standup summary — all without you having to remember to ask.
How Scheduled Tasks Work
Section titled “How Scheduled Tasks Work”Tasks are defined in a file in your vault:
<vault>/atlas/memory/functions/schedule.mdAtlas checks this file periodically and runs any tasks whose scheduled time has arrived. Each task specifies a prompt and a cron expression for when to run it.
What Scheduled Tasks Can Do
Section titled “What Scheduled Tasks Can Do”When a scheduled task fires, Atlas runs its prompt in an isolated AI conversation with full access to your tools — the same tools available in a normal chat. This means a scheduled task can:
- Search your notes and memory
- Create or update notes
- Read your calendar (if connected)
- Check the weather
- Save facts to long-term memory
- Create or modify daily notes
Examples of useful scheduled tasks:
- Morning briefings (“Check my calendar and tasks, give me a summary of today”)
- Daily standup prep (“Summarize what I worked on yesterday based on my daily notes”)
- Weekly reviews (“What did I accomplish this week? Write a summary in my weekly review note”)
- Regular knowledge updates (“Check my goals and update my daily note with progress reminders”)
Cron Expression Syntax
Section titled “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
Section titled “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 |
Security: Tasks Start Disabled
Section titled “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
Section titled “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
Section titled “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
Section titled “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.