Schedule Recipe Skill

Convert a recurring intent — "competitive briefing every Monday 8am" — into the concrete, copy-paste setup for whatever runner the user actually has, with failure handling so it degrades loudly, not silently.

What This Skill Produces

• A runner recommendation (or confirmation of the user's choice) with the reason
• The exact setup — command, cron expression, or workflow file — ready to paste
• The run prompt: what the scheduled agent should do each cycle, including which skill to load
• Failure alerting and a first-run test plan

Required Inputs

Ask for (if not already provided):

• What should run — which skill or task, and what inputs it reads each cycle
• Cadence and timezone — "every Friday 4pm" means nothing without one
• Where it can run — Claude Code (routines/loops), a server with cron, n8n, or GitHub Actions
• Where the output should land — file in a repo, Slack/email, a Brain folder, a PR

Runner Selection

Pick the simplest runner the user already has, in this order:

| Runner | Choose when | Setup shape | |---|---|---| | Claude Code routine (/schedule) | The user lives in Claude Code and the task needs an agent (reads repos, runs skills) | A scheduled cloud agent with the run prompt | | Claude Code /loop | Same-session polling or short-lived recurrence, not a standing schedule | /loop <interval> <command> | | GitHub Actions cron | Inputs and output both live in a repo; team wants runs versioned and reviewable | A workflow YAML with schedule: trigger | | n8n / Make | The trigger or output is a SaaS app (Slack, CRM, sheets) | A workflow calling the skills REST API | | System cron | A server exists and the task is a script | A crontab line invoking the CLI |

State the choice and the runner-up. If the user names a runner, use it — don't relitigate.

The Run Prompt

Every recipe includes the prompt the scheduled run executes. It must contain:

1. The skill to load and the artifact to produce
2. The sources to read this cycle — explicit paths/URLs, not "the usual"
3. Where to write the result and how to mark the edition (date, sources read)
4. What to do on missing sources — name the failure behaviour, never fabricate
5. Delta instruction if recurring: read the previous edition first and report changes (see delta-briefing)

Output Format

Schedule Recipe: task] — cadence]

Runner: choice] — because one line]. Runner-up: alternative] if condition].

Setup (copy-paste):

[the exact command / crontab line / workflow YAML / n8n outline]

Run prompt: > the full prompt the scheduled agent executes each cycle]

Failure alerting: how a failed/skipped run becomes visible — e.g. the run posts an error note to the same channel it would post the brief].

First-run test: trigger one run manually now; check the two or three things that prove it worked] before trusting the schedule.

Quality Checks

• ] The cron expression / schedule matches the stated cadence and timezone — show the conversion
• ] The setup block is genuinely copy-paste: no <placeholders> left except secrets, which are named
• ] The run prompt names explicit sources and an output destination
• ] A failed run is visible somewhere a human already looks
• ] The recipe includes a manual first-run test, not just "it'll fire Monday"

Anti-Patterns

• ] Do not pick a runner the user doesn't have — a perfect n8n flow is useless without n8n
• ] Do not write a run prompt that says "as usual" or relies on the agent remembering prior runs without a stored previous edition
• ] Do not schedule without failure alerting — silence and success must not look identical
• ] Do not default to hourly/daily to "be safe" — match the cadence to how often the inputs change
• ] Do not put secrets inline in the setup block — reference the runner's secret store