Schedule Prompts

Run prompts on a recurring schedule or set one-time reminders within a proto session.

[!note] Scheduled tasks are session-scoped — they live only while proto is running. Nothing is written to disk.

[!note] This is an experimental feature. Enable with experimental.cron: true in settings, or set PROTO_ENABLE_CRON=1 in your environment.

Schedule a recurring prompt with /loop

/loop 5m check if the deployment finished and tell me what happened

proto schedules the job, confirms the cadence and job ID, then executes the prompt immediately. After that it fires on the interval.

Interval syntax

Units: s (seconds), m (minutes), h (hours), d (days). Seconds round up to the nearest minute.

Loop over a command

/loop 20m /review-pr 1234

Each time the job fires, proto runs /review-pr 1234 as if you had typed it.

Manage loops

/loop list     # list all scheduled jobs
/loop clear    # cancel all jobs

Set a one-time reminder

remind me at 3pm to push the release branch

in 45 minutes, check whether the integration tests passed

proto schedules a single-fire task that deletes itself after running.

Manage scheduled tasks

Natural language management:

what scheduled tasks do I have?

cancel the deploy check job

How scheduling works

• The scheduler checks every second and enqueues due tasks when proto is idle.
• If proto is busy when a task fires, the prompt waits until the current turn ends.
• All times use local timezone.
• Recurring tasks expire after 3 days and fire one final time before deleting themselves.
• One-shot tasks delete themselves after firing once.
• Limit: 50 scheduled tasks per session.

Jitter

To avoid thundering-herd at the API, the scheduler adds a small deterministic offset per task:

• Recurring: fires up to 10% of its period late (capped at 15 minutes).
• One-shot at :00 or :30: fires up to 90 seconds early.

The offset is derived from the task ID — the same task always gets the same offset. Use a minute other than :00 or :30 (e.g. 7 9 * * *) to avoid one-shot jitter.

Cron expression reference

CronCreate accepts standard 5-field cron: minute hour day-of-month month day-of-week.

Supports wildcards (*), single values, steps (*/15), ranges (1-5), and comma-separated lists. Does not support L, W, ?, or name aliases (MON, JAN).

Underlying tools

Limitations

• Tasks only fire while proto is running and idle. Closing the session cancels everything.
• No catch-up for missed fires — if a task is missed while proto is busy, it fires once when proto becomes idle.
• No persistence across restarts.