Run a job on a schedule

A scheduled job starts an agent at fixed times: a morning triage, a weekly report, a check every 20 minutes. Each start is one session with the job's prompt. macOS starts it through launchd, so it runs whether or not the app is open.

1. Create the job

1. Open Jobs and click New job.
2. Under Kind, choose On a schedule.
3. In Every, write when it runs (see the schedule format below), for example 0 8 * * 1 for Mondays at 08:00.
4. Fill in Name, Description, Timeout (seconds), the Profile (and Repo for a Work profile), and the Prompt.
5. Click Create job. A new job starts Off.

2. Turn it on

Flip the job's switch to On, or run flightdeck job enable <id>. From then on it runs at every time the schedule names. Off stops future runs; it does not stop one in progress.

To try it straight away, open the job's Details, go to Runs and click Run now. Run now needs the job to be On.

The schedule format

The schedule has five fields, in your Mac's local time: minute hour * * days.

Field	What it takes
minute	0 to 59, or every N minutes: */10, */12, */15, */20 or */30
hour	0 to 23, or * for every hour
days	* for every day, or a comma list of 0 to 7 (0 and 7 are Sunday)

The middle two fields are always *.

Schedule	Runs
0 8 * * 1,2,3,4,5	08:00 on weekdays
30 9 * * 1	09:30 every Monday
*/20 * * * *	every 20 minutes

When the Mac was asleep

A run missed while the Mac slept is not replayed one by one: only the newest missed time runs, once, when the Mac wakes. On the night the clocks go back, the repeated hour runs nothing.

A job with no schedule

Leave Every empty and the job runs only when you click Run now. That is useful for a task you want to start by hand but keep written down.