gabrielmoreira 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:
- The skill to load and the artifact to produce
- The sources to read this cycle — explicit paths/URLs, not "the usual"
- Where to write the result and how to mark the edition (date, sources read)
- What to do on missing sources — name the failure behaviour, never fabricate
- 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