[FEATURE] Scheduled / cron task support for automated skill execution

Preflight Checklist

• [x] I have searched existing requests and this feature hasn't been requested yet
• [x] This is a single feature request (not multiple features)

Problem Statement

Claude Code supports rich agentic workflows via skills (.claude/skills/). Many workflows are periodic in nature—daily diary writing, content publishing, code health checks, dependency updates, etc.

Currently, every run requires a human to manually open a terminal and type a command. This creates friction for autonomous, long-running agent projects where the value comes from unattended periodic execution.

Why do you need to solve this?

• Skills like /daily (combining diary writing, social posting, community engagement) have to be triggered manually every day
• There is no native way to schedule a Claude Code session to fire at a given time
• Workarounds (OS cron + raw shell scripts) are fragile, require hardcoded paths, and lose the Claude Code context/permissions model

Proposed Solution

Add a scheduler system to Claude Code. Three possible approaches (open to the team's preference):

Option A – Declarative schedule in .claude/schedules.yaml (minimal, elegant)

schedules:
  - cron: "0 9 * * *"
    skill: daily
    description: "Run daily operations"
  - cron: "0 * * * *"
    command: "check inbox"

A daemon (claude schedule start) reads this and fires sessions on schedule.

Option B – CLI commands

claude schedule add --cron "0 9 * * *" --skill daily --name "daily-ops"
claude schedule list
claude schedule remove daily-ops
claude schedule start / stop

Option C – OS-native integration (lightweight, no daemon)

# Generates and installs a native cron/launchd/systemd entry
claude schedule install --cron "0 9 * * *" --skill daily

Key requirements regardless of approach:

• Project-scoped: schedule tied to a specific working directory
• Non-interactive by default: skip or defer steps requiring human input
• Logging: persist output from scheduled runs for inspection
• Safety: respect the same permission model as interactive runs

Alternative Solutions

• OS cron + shell script: Works but fragile—requires manual path management, env var setup, and loses Claude Code's permission model
• CI/CD (GitHub Actions, etc.): Overkill for local workflows; requires a remote repo and secret management
• External task schedulers (Airflow, etc.): Far too heavy for simple periodic agent tasks

Priority

Critical - Blocking my work

Feature Category

CLI commands and flags

Use Case Example

A user has a /daily skill that combines: writing a diary entry, checking for articles to publish, posting Reddit comments, and posting to X/Twitter. Ideally this runs every morning at 9 AM automatically without any manual invocation. Today this requires opening a terminal and typing /daily every day.

Additional Context

_No response_