Routines

Scheduling routines

A routine is a recurring task that runs unattended on a cron schedule, in a fresh sandbox isolated from the user's workspace, holding only the secrets the routine declares. Use it for "every morning, summarize X and report" / "weekly, bump deps and open a PR" — work that should happen without the user present. There is no one-off reminder tool: it cannot ask the user anything mid-run, so it is the wrong fit for a plain "remind me at 9pm" ping.

The isolation model (why this is safe)

• The routine runs in its OWN sandbox (lhart-<id>), never the user's — so it cannot see their workspace, other projects, or undeclared secrets.
• It receives ONLY the secret env vars listed in secrets: — that list IS the blast-radius boundary. Declare the minimum the task needs (check the "Available secret env vars" line for the names).
• It is headless (nobody to approve mid-run): shell commands run normally in the isolated sandbox — git clone, pip install, build, commit/push all work, since the sandbox is the blast radius. Secret-exfiltration and known-destructive commands are still refused, and any non-shell action that would need approval is auto-denied — design the task to avoid those, or do an irreversible external step as a draft for the user to confirm later.
• Outputs come back as artifacts in the routine's session — it cannot write into the user's workspace.

How to author one

Call routine(action="create", name=..., schedule=..., task=..., secrets=[...]):

• schedule: a 5-field cron expression ("0 8 * * *" = daily 08:00 UTC).
• task: a self-contained instruction — the routine has no memory of this chat and no access to the user's files, so state everything it needs.
• secrets: the exact secret env names the task requires (e.g. ["GITHUB_PAT"]), or omit for none.

Test it before scheduling

ALWAYS dry-run a routine before you create it:

routine(action="test", name=..., task=..., secrets=[...])

This runs the task ONCE right now under the routine's real isolation — its own lhart- sandbox, headless (shell runs; non-shell approvals denied), only the declared secrets — and blocks until it finishes, returning {success, status, output, ...}. Read the output: if the task didn't work (missing secret, needed an approval, wrong assumption), fix task/secrets and test again. A test schedules nothing (no schedule row, no chat session) — but it does provision the routine's real lhart- sandbox, which the scheduled routine then reuses, so pass the same name you'll create with. Then create.

Scheduling it

The tool asks the user to confirm before scheduling. On the first call it returns status: "awaiting_user_response" — stop, let the user decide, and do NOT claim the routine is scheduled until you get success: true with an id.

Use routine(action="list") to show scheduled routines and routine(action="cancel", id=...) to remove one (the user can also type /routines / /routines remove <id>).