How to Schedule Automated Tasks With Cron Jobs in StartClaw
Guide
Tutorial
Make Your Agent Work While You Sleep
Cron jobs are scheduled tasks that run automatically at set times. They're the backbone of every serious OpenClaw automation — from morning briefings to weekly reports.
Common Schedules
Every weekday at 7 AM — Morning briefing
Every Monday at 9 AM — Weekly SEO report / competitor analysis
Every evening at 10 PM — Daily journal compilation
Every hour — Email triage and notification routing
Every night at 1 AM — Automated outreach / data collection
Best Practices
Start narrow. One cron job, one clear task. "Summarize my unread emails and send to Telegram" is better than "manage my entire digital life."
Set expectations. Tell the agent exactly what to include, how to format it, and what to do if something is missing.
Monitor at first. Check the trace logs for the first few runs to make sure everything works as expected.
Iterate. Your cron prompts will improve over time. The agent's persistent memory helps — it learns what you care about and adjusts.
Example Cron Prompt
"Every weekday at 7:00 AM: Check my Gmail for unread messages, summarize the top 5 by importance. Check Google Calendar for today's events. List my open Linear tickets sorted by priority. Send everything to Telegram in under 200 words."
StartClaw handles the scheduling infrastructure. You just define what and when.