Work that runs without you
The last step away from the terminal: work that starts because of a clock or an event rather than because you typed something.
| Feature | What it is | Where it runs |
|---|---|---|
| Routines | A saved prompt, repositories and connectors, with triggers | Anthropic-managed infrastructure |
| Scheduled tasks | A prompt on a schedule from the desktop app | Your machine |
| Remote Control | Driving your local session from a browser | Your machine, controlled from elsewhere |
A routine is the most automatic of the three. You save a configuration once and attach triggers to it: a schedule like nightly or weekly, an HTTP call to an endpoint of its own, or a GitHub event. It is in research preview, so the details are still moving.
Remote Control is the opposite trade. The work stays on your machine with your files and your environment, and only the interface moves, which is what you want when the job needs your local setup but you are not at the desk.
What is worth automating
The same test as any automation, with one addition. It has to be work whose failure you would notice.
- Good: a nightly dependency audit that opens an issue. You read the issue or you do not, and nothing breaks either way.
- Good: a weekly summary of what changed, posted somewhere people look.
- Careful: anything that writes to a shared branch. Now a mistake at three in the morning is everybody's mistake.
- No: anything you cannot check afterwards. If you cannot tell whether it went well, it should not run unattended.
- Write down one job you do every week that a routine could do badly, and what would make it safe.
- Try Remote Control once, then decide whether you trust it more or less than you expected.
You understood something today that you didn't yesterday.