You'll finish with: A recurring job on a schedule, and knowing when it will actually fire.
The last step: jobs that run without anyone starting them.
The Friday review, running itself
You read it Monday. Nobody had to remember.
Read this before you build it: where the job runs decides whether it runs at all. Scheduled tasks normally run remotely — on their cadence, with your laptop shut. But a task that needs local files can only run locally, which means the desktop app has to be open on that machine when the clock strikes. A Friday 4pm job that writes into a folder on your laptop will not fire if you closed the lid at 3.
Two ways to run the same review
If your business lives in its tools rather than in folders, build the second one — it is the version that actually runs itself. If your work really is in local files, keep the first and leave the machine on, or run it by hand on Monday morning.
Anything that sends, publishes, or spends. A scheduled job runs when you're not looking — that's exactly the wrong time to let something reach a client. Scheduled jobs produce drafts and reports. You send.
This isn't just our opinion. Anthropic's own safety guidance says not to schedule tasks that access sensitive files, send messages on your behalf, make purchases, or take other actions that are hard to undo — and to start with low-risk things like summaries before automating anything bigger.
Each scheduled task has an approval mode. Manually approve means it waits for you before acting — which defeats the point of a job that runs while you're away, and is exactly right for anything that touches money or clients. Skip all approvals means nothing checks its work. For an unattended weekly review that only reads and writes a summary, the default is fine; for anything else, ask why it's scheduled at all.
Every Friday at 4pm:
1. Read every folder under clients/ changed in the last 7 days.
2. Find every commitment with a date that has passed or falls
in the next 7 days.
3. Find anything untouched for more than 14 days.
Write to reviews/YYYY-MM-DD-review.md:
- Moved this week
- Overdue (ours first, then theirs)
- Due in the next 7 days
- Gone quiet (14+ days, this is where revenue leaks)
- Needs a decision from me
Rank by money at risk. Under one page. Send nothing.Monday morning the review exists and it's accurate. Check the Scheduled page in the left sidebar too — it lists past runs, so you can see it actually fired rather than assuming.
If nothing ran at all and the job touches local folders, the machine was almost certainly asleep — that's the limitation above, not a broken setup. Either leave the computer on, or rebuild the job so it only uses connectors. If it ran but came back empty or generic, your folders don't have enough in them yet; give it a fortnight of real use first.
Cowork mounted on your real folders, producing real files, and one recurring job — running unattended if it lives in your connectors, or on a machine you leave on if it lives in your folders. Next: connecting the tools your business actually runs on.