Scheduled Agents

Run agents on cron schedules for recurring automations like daily summaries, code reviews, and maintenance tasks.

The SDK supports running agents on cron schedules. Scheduled agents persist across process restarts and run independently of any client application.

How Scheduling Works

You define a schedule (cron expression + prompt + config)
The SDK stores the schedule and manages execution
At each trigger time a new session is created and the agent is run
Results are stored, and the CLI can post them to a chat through a connector (Telegram, Slack, and others)

Scheduled agents rely on the hub-spoke architecture that is part of ClineCore. The hub runs as a background process on your machine. It starts automatically when needed and persists schedules across restarts.

Creating Schedules Programmatically with Cline SDK

import { ClineCore } from "@cline/sdk"

const cline = await ClineCore.create({
  clientName: "scheduler",
  automation: true,
})

// Automation starts with ClineCore. Pass automation: { autoStart: false }
// to start it later with cline.automation.start().
const runs = cline.automation.listRuns()

cline.automation reads schedule files from ~/.cline/cron/, reconciles them, ingests events and lists runs. sdk/examples/cron has sample schedule files.

Schedule Wizard with Cline CLI

If you have the Cline CLI installed (npm i -g cline), run cline schedule to open an interactive menu for creating and managing schedules, browsing execution history, and viewing performance statistics.

Creating Schedules with Flags

# Daily at 9 AM on weekdays
cline schedule create "PR summary" \
  --cron "0 9 * * MON-FRI" \
  --prompt "List all open PRs, their review status, and any that have been open more than 3 days" \
  --workspace /path/to/repo

# Every 6 hours
cline schedule create "Health check" \
  --cron "0 */6 * * *" \
  --prompt "Run the test suite and report any failures" \
  --workspace /path/to/project

# Monday mornings
cline schedule create "Weekly digest" \
  --cron "0 8 * * MON" \
  --prompt "Summarize last week's commits, PRs merged, and issues closed" \
  --workspace /path/to/repo

Scheduling lists the other options, such as --provider and --model.

Managing Schedules

# List all schedules
cline schedule list

# Trigger a schedule immediately (without waiting for cron)
cline schedule trigger <schedule-id>

# Pause a schedule
cline schedule pause <schedule-id>

# Resume a paused schedule
cline schedule resume <schedule-id>

# Delete a schedule
cline schedule delete <schedule-id>

# View execution history
cline schedule history <schedule-id>

Cron Expression Reference

Expression	Schedule
`0 9 * * MON-FRI`	9 AM, Monday through Friday
`0 /6 * *`	Every 6 hours
`0 8 * * MON`	8 AM every Monday
`30 17 * * *`	5:30 PM every day
`0 0 1 * *`	Midnight on the 1st of each month
`/30 * * *`	Every 30 minutes

Use Cases

Daily Standup Summary

cline schedule create "Standup prep" \
  --cron "0 8 * * MON-FRI" \
  --prompt "Summarize: (1) PRs merged yesterday, (2) PRs currently in review, (3) open issues assigned to team members. Format as a brief standup update." \
  --workspace /path/to/repo

Automated Dependency Updates

cline schedule create "Dependency check" \
  --cron "0 10 * * MON" \
  --prompt "Check for outdated npm dependencies. For any with security vulnerabilities, create a branch with the update and open a PR." \
  --workspace /path/to/project

Codebase Health Report

cline schedule create "Code health" \
  --cron "0 6 * * MON" \
  --prompt "Analyze the codebase for: (1) files with no test coverage, (2) TODO/FIXME comments older than 30 days, (3) functions longer than 100 lines. Produce a health report." \
  --workspace /path/to/project

Concurrency Limits

Each schedule runs one execution at a time unless you raise --max-parallel. An execution that comes due while the schedule is busy waits in the queue.
The hub runs at most 10 scheduled executions at once across all schedules. ClineCore.create({ automation: { globalMaxConcurrency } }) changes this limit for the SDK's own scheduler.
If the hub was stopped when a run was due, it queues one catch-up run when it starts again, not one for each missed time.

Routing Results

The CLI can post each run's final reply to a chat through a running connector. Routing Results shows how to set the chat.