Scheduled tasks

A scheduled task is a piece of recurring work you hand to Clay's global agent. Clay starts each run on the cadence you set, and pauses a run that needs your input.

Scheduled tasks live under Scheduled in the sidebar of Agent, the left-nav tab where you tell Clay what to work on. For what a task can reach and what it costs, see Clay's global agent.

Scheduling a task

1. In the Agent sidebar, open Scheduled, then select Schedule.
2. On the What should run on its own? screen, start from a template or describe the task and cadence in your own words. The templates are Weekly pipeline priorities, Weekly account coverage review, and Monthly workflow optimization review.
3. Clay proposes the schedule and you edit it before confirming:
   • Instructions — what Clay follows each run. Say what to do and when to stop; the cadence comes from the fields below.
   • Frequency — Daily, Weekdays, Weekly, or Monthly.
   • Time — the run time on your own clock — plus Day on a weekly schedule.
   • Starts, and End date if it should stop on a set date.

You can also ask for a schedule inside a task — say what should run and how often, and Clay fills in the same cadence fields for you to check and confirm. Ask for a cadence the fields don't offer, such as every other week, and Clay builds that too. Note: a schedule runs at most once a day.

Managing a schedule

The same controls follow a schedule from the Scheduled list to its own page.

Once it's saved, the Scheduled list shows each schedule's Next run.
A schedule's own page holds the Instructions it runs, which you can edit, and every run it has had.

A schedule also carries its own permission level, set from that page rather than from the message box. That lets a run nobody is watching be held tighter than a task you start yourself — see Clay's global agent for what each level allows.

FAQs

Who does a scheduled run act as?

It runs as the person who created the schedule, so it reaches what that person can reach in Clay. Scheduled lists the schedules you created.

A schedule runs only while its creator can still edit in the workspace. If they leave, it stops and is marked complete.

What happens when a run stops for input?

The schedule's row on Scheduled reads Waiting on you, and the waiting run carries a Needs input pill on the schedule's own page. Opening that run takes you to the task it created, where you can answer and let it carry on.

While a run is waiting, the schedule stands still: the next run on its cadence is skipped rather than queued, and Run now stays unavailable until the waiting run finishes.

With several schedules going, filter the Scheduled list by Needs input to see just the ones waiting on you.

Will it stop on its own?

On a date, yes — turn on End date and set Ends, and the schedule finishes after its last run.

A target in Instructions works differently. "Book meetings for the AE and stop once 25 are booked" shapes each run rather than ending the schedule: where Clay can read that number from your workspace data, it takes the reading first, skips work already done, and says where the total stands in its reply.

To end a schedule yourself, use Mark as complete or Delete.