Setup Cron

Setup-cron - Schedule Daily Automation

Sets up an unattended daily run of /daily-cycle <project>. One schedule per project; schedules for different projects coexist.

Before starting: Read ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/references/workspace-conventions.md and follow the cross-cutting conventions there.

Prerequisites

• At least one project exists. None -> "Run /leadace <your-homepage-URL> first."

Confirm with the user

Use AskUserQuestion for enumerable choices, plain text for free-form input.

1. Project: $0 if given; else list_projects — exactly one -> use it, several -> ask. <PROJECT_SLUG> = the project name lowercased, every character outside [a-z0-9] replaced by - (collapse runs, trim leading/trailing -).
2. Method, offered in this order; state what each can run before the user picks:
   • Server-side schedule — default, and the only one that needs neither a machine nor a Claude session. LeadAce itself runs the instruction; email outreach, replies, evaluation and list building all work. It has no browser, so contact forms, SNS DMs and platform channels are out. Set it up in the Web app (Project settings -> Scheduled runs) or by asking in the Web chat; list_schedules shows what is already registered. Registering it is not possible from here — say where to go and what to write.
   • Claude Cowork scheduled task — for browser channels, or a self-host without a model key on the server. Runs in the cloud with no machine on; browser channels need the Claude Desktop app open at run time.
   • Claude Code Desktop scheduled task — runs on the user's machine while Claude Desktop is open and the computer is awake, with whatever local toolchain and browser MCP the user has configured (/leadace shows the live capability summary). A Claude Code cloud routine also exists, but it must be attached to a GitHub repository (cloned on every run; it uses the skills committed there) although LeadAce needs no repository — mention it, do not recommend it; it is unverified with LeadAce.
   • /loop 24h /daily-cycle <PROJECT_NAME> — runs only while that session stays open and expires after 7 days. Print it and stop.
   • OS scheduler (LaunchAgent / cron / Task Scheduler) — last resort, for a machine without the Desktop app such as a headless server. Offer it only when the others do not fit.
3. Schedule: time (24h HH:MM, local timezone, default 09:00) and frequency (every day / weekdays only).

Server-side schedule

Nothing is installed and nothing runs on the user's machine: a schedule is a row in their workspace holding one instruction, a local hour, and the days it runs. LeadAce runs it as its own agent — it may read everything and start jobs (the daily cycle, list building, drafting or sending per the project's outbound mode, evaluation), and may never delete, set do-not-contact, or change a schedule.

Point the user at Project settings -> Scheduled runs in the Web app, or the Web chat ("run the daily cycle every weekday at 9"). Give them the instruction to paste — Run today's cycle for up to <N> prospects. for the daily cycle, or whatever they actually want run — and the hour in their own time zone. list_schedules reads back what exists; use it to confirm, and to avoid registering a second schedule for a project that already has one.

Report: what will run, when, in which time zone, that it needs no machine, and which of their channels it cannot do (forms / SNS / platform — those need one of the methods below).

Claude Cowork — scheduled task

Nothing is installed from here; walk the user through the UI:

1. Scheduled (sidebar) -> new task, or /schedule in any Cowork session. Name it LeadAce daily-cycle <PROJECT_NAME>; if one already exists for this project, edit it instead of adding another.
2. Prompt: /daily-cycle <PROJECT_NAME> — append a count to override the outbound target (/daily-cycle <PROJECT_NAME> 5).
3. Frequency: the chosen time, every day or weekdays.
4. Permissions: auto-approve — anything left on "ask" aborts the run.
5. Settings -> Capabilities -> Code execution -> Allow network egress: All domains. With the default (package managers only) every page fetch fails and only check-responses, evaluate, and email sending complete.
6. If the project uses contact forms, SNS, or platform channels: keep Claude Desktop open at the scheduled time, and pick its default browser beforehand — a scheduled run cannot answer the browser chooser, and a run that gets no answer has no browser automation. Forms run on the built-in Claude browser or Claude in Chrome; SNS DMs and platform channels need Claude in Chrome's logged-in profile.

The task runs in the cloud; the user's browser is reachable while the Claude Desktop app is open on their machine.

• Runs without the machine: check-responses (email replies; SNS and platform replies stay unconfirmed), evaluate, email outbound, build-list (slower and thinner than a local run — the cloud egress IP is refused by some sources).
• Needs the Desktop app open at run time: contact forms, SNS DMs, platform outreach. Without the Desktop app there is no browser automation: Claude in Chrome is unreachable, and a headless browser inside the sandbox cannot complete TLS through the egress relay. A machine that cannot stay open at that time: use the Claude Code Desktop task.

Report: the prompt, the schedule, the egress setting, what runs without the machine and which channels need the Desktop app open; ask the user to confirm the task shows under Scheduled.

Claude Code Desktop — scheduled task

Nothing is installed from here; walk the user through the UI: Code tab -> Routines -> New routine -> Local. Name: leadace-daily-cycle-<PROJECT_SLUG>; if that task already exists, edit it instead of creating another.

• Instructions: /daily-cycle <PROJECT_NAME> (a count may follow). Working folder = the folder the user runs LeadAce from — plugins, MCP servers, and permission rules are discovered from it. Isolated worktree: off.
• Permission mode: keep the default, never a bypass-all mode. After saving, Run now once and answer "always allow" for each prompt; later runs auto-approve the same tools instead of stalling.
• Schedule: Daily or Weekdays at the chosen time.
• Runs only while Claude Desktop is open and the computer is awake (Settings -> Desktop app -> General -> Keep computer awake; a closed lid still sleeps). After missed runs, exactly one catch-up run starts on wake.

Report: the task name, schedule, folder, and the awake requirement.

OS scheduler — last resort

Installs an OS-scheduler entry that runs /daily-cycle <project> headless; re-running for the same project replaces its entry. Advanced: absolute paths, stored permission rules, and OAuth expiry are the user's to maintain.

Check before installing:

• claude CLI on PATH (which claude; capture the absolute path). Missing -> stop and offer the other methods.
• Headless runs cannot answer permission prompts: any tool without a stored allow rule is denied, and repeated denials abort the run. The user should have run /daily-cycle interactively at least once from this directory, answering "always allow" for its tools; if they haven't, warn that scheduled runs may abort until they do. Never compensate with permission-bypass flags — denying un-allowed tools is the intended fail-safe.
• The MCP OAuth token is reused from interactive sessions and expires after ~30 days of inactivity; scheduled runs then fail until the user signs in interactively again.

Then: Model — default = omit --model so the run uses the user's configured model; add --model <name> only if the user names one. Show the exact file/command about to be installed and ask "Install now / just print". On print: output the commands and stop.

Invariants of the scheduled command

Every template below must:

• run <CLAUDE_PATH> -p "/daily-cycle <PROJECT_NAME>" --permission-mode dontAsk (plus --model if chosen), with <CLAUDE_PATH> absolute — schedulers don't inherit shell PATH
• set CLAUDE_CODE_PRINT_BG_WAIT_CEILING_MS=10800000 (3 h) — daily-cycle runs its phases as sub-agents, and headless mode otherwise cuts sub-agent waits off at 10 minutes
• start in the current session's working directory (<WORKDIR> = pwd) — plugins, MCP servers, and permission rules are discovered from the cwd, so a different start directory can silently lose the LeadAce plugin
• embed <PROJECT_SLUG> in every named artifact — scheduler label/task name, plist/wrapper file, crontab tag, log files — so schedules for several projects coexist and replace/remove operations touch only their own project
• append stdout/stderr to a log file in the user's home

Templates

Substitute <HH>, <MM>, <PROJECT_NAME>, <PROJECT_SLUG>, <CLAUDE_PATH>, <WORKDIR>, <HOME>.

macOS — <HOME>/Library/LaunchAgents/ai.leadace.daily-cycle.<PROJECT_SLUG>.plist

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
  <key>Label</key>
  <string>ai.leadace.daily-cycle.<PROJECT_SLUG></string>
  <key>ProgramArguments</key>
  <array>
    <string><CLAUDE_PATH></string>
    <string>-p</string>
    <string>/daily-cycle <PROJECT_NAME></string>
    <string>--permission-mode</string>
    <string>dontAsk</string>
  </array>
  <key>WorkingDirectory</key>
  <string><WORKDIR></string>
  <key>StartCalendarInterval</key>
  <dict>
    <key>Hour</key><integer><HH></integer>
    <key>Minute</key><integer><MM></integer>
  </dict>
  <key>StandardOutPath</key>
  <string><HOME>/Library/Logs/leadace-daily-cycle.<PROJECT_SLUG>.log</string>
  <key>StandardErrorPath</key>
  <string><HOME>/Library/Logs/leadace-daily-cycle.<PROJECT_SLUG>.err.log</string>
  <key>EnvironmentVariables</key>
  <dict>
    <key>PATH</key>
    <string>/usr/local/bin:/opt/homebrew/bin:/usr/bin:/bin</string>
    <key>CLAUDE_CODE_PRINT_BG_WAIT_CEILING_MS</key>
    <string>10800000</string>
  </dict>
</dict>
</plist>

Weekdays only: make StartCalendarInterval an array of five dicts, each also containing <key>Weekday</key><integer>N</integer> for N in 1-5.

Write the plist with the Write tool (heredoc escaping is error-prone), then install:

mkdir -p ~/Library/LaunchAgents
launchctl unload ~/Library/LaunchAgents/ai.leadace.daily-cycle.<PROJECT_SLUG>.plist 2>/dev/null
launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/ai.leadace.daily-cycle.<PROJECT_SLUG>.plist

Linux — user crontab

<MM> <HH> * * * cd <WORKDIR> && CLAUDE_CODE_PRINT_BG_WAIT_CEILING_MS=10800000 <CLAUDE_PATH> -p "/daily-cycle <PROJECT_NAME>" --permission-mode dontAsk >> <HOME>/.leadace-daily-cycle.<PROJECT_SLUG>.log 2>&1  # leadace-daily-cycle-<PROJECT_SLUG>

Weekdays only: <MM> <HH> * * 1-5. Install by replacing any existing line with the same tag:

( crontab -l 2>/dev/null | grep -v "# leadace-daily-cycle-<PROJECT_SLUG>" ; echo '<the line above>' ) | crontab -

Windows — Task Scheduler

Write <HOME>\leadace-daily-cycle-<PROJECT_SLUG>.cmd (a wrapper file sidesteps /TR quoting limits):

@echo off
cd /d <WORKDIR>
set CLAUDE_CODE_PRINT_BG_WAIT_CEILING_MS=10800000
"<CLAUDE_PATH>" -p "/daily-cycle <PROJECT_NAME>" --permission-mode dontAsk >> "%USERPROFILE%\leadace-daily-cycle-<PROJECT_SLUG>.log" 2>&1

schtasks /Create /TN LeadAceDailyCycle-<PROJECT_SLUG> /SC DAILY /ST <HH>:<MM> /TR "\"<HOME>\leadace-daily-cycle-<PROJECT_SLUG>.cmd\"" /F

Weekdays only: /SC WEEKLY /D MON,TUE,WED,THU,FRI.

Verify, then report

Verification (on failure: show the raw output and stop without claiming success):

• macOS: launchctl list | grep ai.leadace.daily-cycle.<PROJECT_SLUG>
• Linux: crontab -l | grep leadace-daily-cycle-<PROJECT_SLUG>
• Windows: schtasks /Query /TN LeadAceDailyCycle-<PROJECT_SLUG>

Report: the schedule (time, frequency, project), the installed file/task, the log path, how to remove it (macOS: launchctl unload <plist> && rm <plist> / Linux: crontab -l | grep -v "# leadace-daily-cycle-<PROJECT_SLUG>" | crontab - / Windows: schtasks /Delete /TN LeadAceDailyCycle-<PROJECT_SLUG> /F), and the ~30-day OAuth reminder.