Anthropic rolled out scheduled tasks for Claude Cowork, letting the desktop agent run recurring work automatically at fixed intervals. Daily briefings, weekly spreadsheet refreshes, Friday presentation prep: set it once and Claude handles it from there, no prompting required each time. The feature is available to all paid Claude plans on the desktop app.
The catch: your machine has to be awake and the Claude Desktop app open for tasks to fire. If a scheduled run is missed, Cowork picks it up the next time the app is active. That's a real limitation for teams expecting always-on automation, and Anthropic hasn't said when (or if) a cloud-hosted version is coming. Users trigger scheduling via a /schedule command or the new "Scheduled" section in the sidebar, per Anthropic's help documentation.
Alongside scheduling, Anthropic added a Customize tab to the Cowork sidebar that consolidates plugins, skills, and connectors into a single management panel. This ships as the plugin ecosystem keeps expanding: 13 new MCP connectors (Google Workspace, DocuSign, FactSet, and others) and prebuilt plugin templates for finance, HR, engineering, and design all landed at the company's Enterprise Agents event on February 24. Enterprise admins can now build private plugin marketplaces tied to their own GitHub repos. The open-source plugin collection lives on GitHub.
Cowork launched as a research preview in January and has since rattled software stocks, with ServiceNow, Salesforce, and Thomson Reuters all taking double-digit hits. Kate Jensen, Anthropic's Head of Americas, called 2025's enterprise agent hype "mostly premature" and framed these updates as the actual delivery. Scheduled tasks are live now on Mac and Windows.
Bottom Line
Scheduled tasks run only while the desktop app is open, making this a local automation play rather than a cloud-hosted agent.
Quick Facts
- Available on all paid Claude plans (Pro, Max, Team, Enterprise)
- Scheduling options: hourly, daily, weekly, weekdays, or manual
- 13 new MCP connectors added February 24
- Requires Claude Desktop app open and machine awake
- New Customize tab consolidates plugins, skills, and connectors
