[FEATURE] Scheduled tasks should run reliably regardless of whether Claude Desktop is open

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 Desktop's scheduled tasks are client-side only — they fire only when the Claude Desktop app is open at the scheduled time. If the app is closed or the Mac is asleep, the task is silently skipped and rescheduled for the next occurrence (e.g., next week for weekly tasks).

This makes scheduled tasks unreliable for any user who doesn't keep Claude Desktop open 24/7. Weekly routines that miss their window are simply lost — there is no catch-up, no retry, no notification that a task was skipped.

Example: Two weekly Monday tasks (SEO audit, site maintenance) both failed to run on their scheduled Monday because the app wasn't open at 8 AM. They were silently rescheduled to the following Monday with no indication anything was missed.

Proposed Solution

Scheduled tasks should execute reliably regardless of whether Claude Desktop is open. The scheduler should either:

1. Run as a background service / daemon that persists independently of the UI, so tasks fire at their scheduled time even when the app is closed, OR
2. 2. On next app launch after a missed window, detect the missed task(s) and offer to run them immediately, OR
3. 3. Integrate with the OS-level scheduler (macOS launchd / Windows Task Scheduler) at task creation time so the OS owns the trigger

At minimum: notify the user when a task was skipped due to the app being closed, rather than silently rescheduling.

Alternative Solutions

The only known workaround is setting up macOS launchd plists to call the claude CLI on schedule — bypassing Claude Desktop's scheduler entirely. This is overly complex, undocumented, and defeats the purpose of having a built-in scheduler. There is no good in-product alternative.

Priority

Critical - Blocking my work

Feature Category

Configuration and settings

Use Case Example

I have weekly scheduled tasks (SEO audit, site maintenance) set to run every Monday at 8 AM and 9 AM. On Monday May 4, 2026, neither task ran because Claude Desktop was not open at those times. There was no notification. I only discovered the miss by checking task status manually. Both tasks were silently rescheduled to May 11 — an entire week of missed maintenance.

Additional Context

_No response_