Schedule a recurring run on this computer

A schedule runs a prompt in a folder on a timetable: every morning, every hour, or once at a set time. Each run starts a new chat that you can open afterwards. Schedules run on this computer, so it has to be on and you have to be logged in.

To keep schedules running while your computer is off, use Cloud schedules instead.

Create a schedule

Run this from the folder the schedule should work in:

haarness schedule add --name morning-review \
  --cron '0 9 * * 1-5' \
  --model openai/gpt-5.6 \
  --prompt 'Review this repository and list anything urgent'

Haarness prints the new schedule's ID and a one-line summary. This one runs at 09:00, Monday to Friday.

You can write the timing in words instead:

haarness schedule add --model openai/gpt-5.6 \
  --natural 'every day at 8am to summarise the commits from yesterday'

Start the phrase with in, every or on, and put the prompt after to. Upper or lower case does not matter, and the prompt keeps the case you typed. The phrase must match one of these forms:

Everything after to is the prompt. on 2026-11-02 to … with only a date runs at midnight, local time. --natural replaces --prompt, --every, --cron and --at; it cannot be combined with them.

You can also ask for a schedule in a chat ("every Monday at 9am, check for outdated dependencies"), or use /schedules in the terminal UI. Both create the same kind of schedule.

Name a schedule

Commands that act on one schedule take its name or its ID, so two schedules cannot share a name. Give one with --name, or put named "…" in the phrase:

haarness schedule add \
  --natural 'every day at 8am to check CI named "ci-check"'

A name you choose is refused if another schedule already has it. Without a name, the schedule is named after the start of its prompt, and gets a number, such as check deps 2, if that name is taken.

Choose when it runs

Pick one of these:

The shortest interval is one minute. Cron fields take numbers, *, lists (1,3), ranges (1-5) and steps (*/15); day names are not accepted, and both 0 and 7 mean Sunday.

Time zones

Cron times and phrases such as every day at 8am use your computer's local time. --at takes a full timestamp with its UTC offset, so it means the same moment anywhere.

--timezone Europe/Paris sets an IANA time zone for cron schedules. It is applied on Linux only. On macOS and Windows the schedule keeps using local time.

One-off runs

A schedule made with --at, in … or on … runs once. The time must be at least one minute in the future. After the run, the schedule turns itself off and stays in the list until you remove it.

See your schedules

haarness schedule list
haarness schedule get morning-review     # every setting, as JSON

Each line of list shows the ID, name, timing, whether it is enabled, the model and the folder. Commands that act on one schedule take its name or its ID.

Run it now

haarness schedule run morning-review

The run starts straight away, even if the schedule is turned off. The command waits for it to finish and then prints the result, including the agent's reply and the chat ID. Add --json for the whole run record.

Check what happened

haarness schedule history morning-review
haarness schedule history morning-review --limit 5 --json

Each line shows the outcome (Success, Failed or Skipped), when it finished, the chat ID and any error. To read the whole conversation, open that chat from the schedule's folder:

haarness --thread <chat-id>

Scheduled chats are titled Schedule: <name> · <date and time>, such as Schedule: morning-review · Nov 2, 09:00, so they are easy to spot in haarness sessions list. In Desktop they appear under Scheduled in the sidebar.

haarness schedule logs morning-review             # where its log file is
haarness schedule logs morning-review --tail 20   # the last 20 lines
haarness schedule logs morning-review --open      # also show it in your file manager

Pause, change or remove it

haarness schedule disable morning-review
haarness schedule enable morning-review
haarness schedule update morning-review --cron '30 8 * * 1-5'
haarness schedule remove morning-review

update takes the same flags as add, plus --enable and --disable. Anything you leave out keeps its current value.

What a scheduled run can do

A scheduled run has nobody to talk to, so it:

• approves permission prompts on its own, once each, and saves no rule. Rules set to deny still block. This is permission inside Haarness only; it does not grant anything at the operating-system level. Read Permissions before scheduling a prompt that edits files or runs commands.
• refuses what only a person may approve, such as a Haarness Cloud action that spends money or deletes something, a website in your Chrome you have not set to Always allow, or an edit to Haarness's own settings. It does not wait for you: the agent is told to leave that for an interactive chat, and the run goes on.
• cannot ask you questions.
• uses the folder's project configuration, unless you created the schedule with --disable-project-config.
• is skipped if the previous run is still going. History records it as Skipped.

Make sure it can reach the model

Pass --model provider/model. Without it, the run uses the default model of the schedule's folder.

A scheduled run starts outside your shell, so API keys that you only export in a shell profile may not be available to it. Store the credential with haarness auth login <provider> first. See Connect a provider.

What it uses on your OS

Haarness registers each schedule with your operating system's own scheduler: launchd on macOS, systemd user timers on Linux, and Task Scheduler on Windows. Nothing else needs to keep running.

A schedule made while HAARNESS_HOME is set is stored under that folder, and its runs use the same folder, so their chats and credentials are found there.

On Windows, cron schedules must be daily or weekly: the day-of-month and month fields must be *.

Reference

Related

• To repeat a prompt inside the chat you are in, use /loop 10m <prompt> in the terminal UI. /loop stop ends it.
• Run a prompt from a script or CI
• Cloud schedules