What you’ll know by the end of this check
- What a routine actually is (one sentence, memorized)
- The three ways to schedule recurring Claude work — and which one to pick when
- Why “cloud” changes everything about what Claude can do for you overnight
The shortest possible answer
A routine is a saved Claude Code configuration — a prompt, one or more repos, a set of connectors — packaged once and run automatically on Anthropic’s cloud infrastructure.
The keyword is cloud. Your laptop closes. The routine keeps running.
The three flavors of scheduling
Claude gives you three ways to run recurring work. They’re not competitors — they’re different tools.
| Routines (cloud) | Desktop scheduled tasks | /loop | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Runs on | Anthropic cloud | Your machine | Your machine, in an open session |
| Laptop must be on | No | Yes | Yes |
| Survives restarts | Yes | Yes | No (session-scoped) |
| Access to local files | No (fresh clone each run) | Yes | Yes |
| Minimum interval | 1 hour | 1 minute | 1 minute |
The mental model:
/loop= “keep this running while I’m at my desk.” Polling a deploy, babysitting a PR, watching a test suite finish. Ends when you close the session.- Desktop scheduled tasks = “run something on my machine at 9am, even if I’m not looking.” Needs your laptop on.
- Routines = “run this overnight while I sleep, with or without my laptop.” Cloud-hosted, fully autonomous.
You want all three eventually. Most people never touch routines because they don’t realize cloud-autonomous Claude is an option.
What triggers a routine
A routine sits idle until one of its triggers fires. Three trigger types can be combined on the same routine:
- Schedule — hourly, daily, weekly, cron expressions. “Every weeknight at 2am.”
- API — you POST to the routine’s
/fireendpoint with a bearer token. “When my deploy succeeds, call Claude.” - GitHub — repo events like
pull_request.openedorrelease.created. “Every new PR gets a review.”
Check 03–05 cover each trigger type in depth.
Research preview caveat
Routines are in research preview as of the time this check was written. The API surface, rate limits, and token semantics can change. Breaking changes ship behind new dated beta headers with a grace period, but if you’re building something production-critical on top of the /fire endpoint, keep the beta-header version pinned and watch the changelog.
Things to try right now (10 minutes)
- Open claude.ai/code/routines and see whether any routines are already there (probably none).
- Read the three-scheduling-options table above until you can match each option to one real use case in your work.
- Write down one task you’d want Claude to do at 3am against your repo. Keep it for check 02.
The canonical version
Full official docs: code.claude.com/docs/en/routines.
Ready to verify this check?
You can answer “what’s a routine” in one sentence. You know when to reach for /loop vs. Desktop vs. Routines. Mark it cleared.