Cron & Heartbeat

This page explains how to make your assistant run tasks automatically.

Cron: Trigger Tasks on Schedule

You can create:

• one-time tasks (run once at a specific time)
• recurring tasks (daily/weekly pattern)

Typical uses:

• daily summary draft
• scheduled reminders
• periodic checks and reports

Restart behavior for recurring interval jobs:

• On restart or hot reload, existing interval jobs do not replay missed runs from downtime.
• After service recovery, the next trigger stays aligned with the existing interval cadence instead of restarting the timer from the recovery moment.
• If the service is already running, including foreground nextclaw serve or pnpm -C packages/nextclaw dev serve, nextclaw cron add / enable / disable / remove / run now applies through the live service API immediately instead of waiting for local file watcher reloads.

Recommended Order (UI First)

1. Create one one-time task and verify the full path.
2. Add one recurring task (for example once per day).
3. Add advanced rules only after baseline is stable.

Heartbeat: Periodic Workspace Task Check

When the gateway is running, NextClaw checks HEARTBEAT.md in workspace periodically. If actionable tasks are found, the agent processes them.

If you do not need Heartbeat for now, keep the file empty.

Advanced Entry (Optional)

For script-based task management, use nextclaw cron subcommands. See details in Commands.