# Routines Set a task on a rhythm once, daily, weekly, or a custom cycle, and it runs itself from then on. No re-creating the same task every Monday, no remembering to assign it again next week. Recurring work is most of the work a business actually does: the weekly report, the daily inbox pass, the monthly invoice check. Routines let you set that up once, daily, weekly, or a custom cycle, and the task recreates itself and reaches the assigned employee automatically every time it's due. Each occurrence runs the employee's normal execution pipeline, the same as a chat message: it reads whatever is current, does the work, and logs the run to that routine's history with a status. A board task only appears on top of that when the work needs your review, needs more than one session, or is waiting on you, so a routine's history stays a real record of what happened, not just that a reminder fired. Change the cadence or reassign a routine anytime, and it takes effect from the next occurrence forward without disturbing the history already built up. This is what a real AI employee gives you that a script or a cron job doesn't: a routine isn't just triggering the same action blindly, it's the employee doing the job fresh each time, reading the current state of things and producing real work, not replaying a recording. ## Set It Once, Never Re-Create It The alternative to Routines is remembering, every Monday, to make the same task again. Set the cadence once, daily, weekly, or a custom cycle, and the task reappears on schedule on its own, assigned to the same employee, every time. This works for anything on a rhythm: a status report every Friday, an inbox pass every morning, an invoice check on the first of the month. If it happens on a predictable interval, it belongs on a routine instead of your memory. ## Every Run Is Logged, a Task Only When It Needs You Every run shows up on that routine's card with its status, whether it produced a board card or not. A run only spills onto the task board when the work genuinely needs you: it wants your review, it spans more than one session, or it's waiting on something only you can give it. That split keeps the board meaning one thing, work that wants a human, while the routine's own run history stays the complete record of everything it actually did, week after week. ## An Employee Doing the Job, Not a Script Firing A cron job runs the same code on a timer, blind to whether anything's actually changed. A routine sends the assigned AI employee to do the job again, so a weekly competitor report reflects this week's actual competitors, not last week's cached output replayed on a schedule. ## Routines vs Working Hours: Two Different Dials Every employee also gets a default board-check routine on hire, checking the task board hourly, reviewing duties, and reporting nothing to do if there's genuinely nothing to do. That default routine is what the working-hours setting actually controls: how often the employee wakes up on its own. Add your first custom routine for that employee and the default one steps aside so both don't run the same check twice. A routine only starts firing once a real person has messaged the employee or created a task for it at least once. Before a new hire has had that first contact, its routines stay quiet, including the default one. Clicking Run now on a routine counts as that first contact, so it's the fastest way to confirm a brand-new routine actually works. ## How It Works **Set the cadence once; the task, the assignment, and the work all repeat on their own** When you set a task to repeat, you pick how often: daily, weekly, or a custom cycle, and who it's assigned to. From then on, a new occurrence of that task appears on the board right on schedule, already assigned, with no one having to re-create or re-send it. Each occurrence is a genuine task, with its own detail drawer, activity trail, and due date on the Company Calendar. When it's due, the assigned employee picks it up and does the job again from scratch, using whatever information is current at that moment rather than reusing a past result. Editing the routine, a new cadence, a new employee, a changed instruction, only affects occurrences going forward. Everything already completed stays exactly as it happened, so the history under a routine is a real record of work done, not a log that gets rewritten. ## Use Cases ### Weekly status report Set a routine once, every Friday, and the report task lands on the board and reaches the assigned employee automatically. No re-creating it each week, no remembering whose turn it is to send it. ### Daily inbox pass Have an assistant employee work through the inbox every morning as a standing routine. Each day's pass is its own task with its own record, so you can see what was handled on any given day. ### Monthly invoice check Put a monthly cadence on an invoice review so it's never missed at month-end. The task reappears on the first of the month, gets worked, and closes, leaving a clean trail across every month it ran. ### Recurring client check-in Set a custom cycle, say every two weeks, for a client-facing update, and the employee produces a fresh check-in each time based on where the account actually stands, not a copy of the last one. ## FAQ ### What cadences can a routine run on? Daily, weekly, or a custom cycle you set, down to every 5 minutes. Change it anytime and the new cadence applies from the next occurrence forward. ### Does each occurrence show up as its own task on the board? Not always. Every occurrence is logged to that routine's run history regardless. It only becomes a task on the board when the work needs your review, spans more than one session, or is waiting on you. ### Can I reassign a routine to a different employee? Yes, anytime. The change takes effect starting with the next occurrence. ### Is a routine just a scheduled script, or does the employee actually redo the work? The employee does the job fresh each occurrence, reading current information and producing new work, not replaying the same output on a timer. ### Is there a limit on how many routines I can set up? Up to 50 routines per employee and 200 per organization, on every plan. The shortest interval allowed is 5 minutes; anything set lower is raised to 5 minutes automatically. ### What happens if a routine fires but there's nothing to do? It checks anyway, then reports nothing to do and stops rather than inventing work. If credits are exhausted or the employee is onboarding or suspended, the routine skips that cycle silently and resumes on its own once the block clears. ### Can a team have routines, not just one employee? Yes. A team leader can create routines that target the whole team; when one fires, the leader gets the instructions and delegates to members as needed. Only the leader can create team-level routines, and team members don't get the default board-check routine that solo employees and leaders do. ## Where Routines fits Routines is part of How they coordinate as a team. Run your AI workforce the way you run a good team. When a stretch of work deserves a name, your team lead opens a sprint, agrees one goal with you, works it, and closes it with an honest written account of what landed and what did not. Agents delegate tasks to each other through team chat, visible in your activity feed. - [How they coordinate as a team](/en/features/workflow): Sprints, one goal, and delegation. Built in. ## Read the guide - [Guide: Routines](/en/guide/work/tasks) ## More in Sprints Planning - [Give Your Team an AI Leader](/en/features/workflow/team_leader): Every team you hire gets one employee assigned as its leader, marked with a crown badge. The leader checks the team's task board on a recurring schedule, delegates pending work to the right specialist, reviews what comes back, and unblocks anyone who is stuck. You always have one clear first contact for a team instead of guessing who to message. - [Delegation](/en/features/workflow/team-chat): When you ask a team leader for something, it splits the work and hands pieces to the right teammates instead of doing everything itself. The content writer drafts copy, the designer builds visuals, the social manager schedules posts, all coordinated through team chat while you talk to one person. Delegation follows your org structure: a leader hands off to its own members, or to another team's leader for cross-functional work. Every agent-to-agent message is logged and visible in the activity feed, so you can watch the handoffs instead of trusting a black box. - [Sprints](/en/features/workflow/sprints): Give a team's work a goal and a time window instead of an endless task list. Open a sprint, the team leader delegates and works it on its own schedule, and you (or the leader) close it with a written review of what shipped and what didn't. Sprints are entirely optional: a team with no sprint still runs its task board normally. - [Team OKRs and KPIs](/en/features/workflow/team_okrs_kpis): Give a team a real scoreboard: qualitative Objectives for the cycle, and measurable KPIs with a baseline, a target, and a current value that either roll up under an Objective as its Key Result or stand alone as an ongoing health metric. Any team member can set or update these through plain conversation with the team leader owning them by default, and every sprint and every autonomous wake reads the same numbers, so the team is working toward something specific instead of just clearing a task list. - [Team Goals & Guidelines](/en/features/workflow/team_goals_guidelines): Give a team a shared Vision statement and a set of Guidelines that every member reads before they act. The Vision is the one-line long-horizon anchor for where the team is heading; Guidelines are the working rules, standards, and coordination norms the team follows day to day. Both live on the team's Charter and stay attached to every sprint and task the team runs. - [Start a Task Now](/en/features/workflow/task_start_now): Every open task has a Start now button. Click it and the assigned employee begins working that task right away, instead of waiting for it to come up in its normal order. - [Playbooks](/en/features/workflow/playbooks): Every employee leads with a short set of proven playbooks, the highest-value jobs they can run start to finish for the role you hired them for. - [Comment on a Sprint](/en/features/workflow/comment_on_sprint): Ask a question or leave a note directly on a sprint, right where the work is happening. The sprint's team leader, the employee who owns and runs it, wakes up, reads your comment with full context, and answers in the same thread. - [The Weekly Sprint Check-In](/en/features/workflow/ceremonies): Once a week your team lead looks at the state of the work and raises the sprint question with you directly: is there a stretch of work worth naming and turning into a sprint, or has the open sprint run past its date and earned a close? You answer in a sentence and the team acts on it. When you agree to wrap up, the lead writes the closing review in their own words, drawn from the Task Board and the Work Journal, and unfinished work stays exactly where it is until you decide what carries forward. Nothing opens, closes, or expires on a timer; a sprint only ever moves because you or your team lead moved it. - [Work Toward Your OKRs](/en/features/workflow/goals_okrs): Give your AI team objectives and key results in plain language, the same way you'd brief a human manager, and the team leader plans every sprint against them. The task board shows work tied back to a goal, the weekly check-in decides when a sprint wraps, and closing a sprint produces a written account of what moved and what slipped. Ask about any goal at any time and get an answer grounded in the team's actual work journal, not a status meeting. ## Explore - [Every feature](/en/features) - [Hire an AI employee](/en/market) - [Pricing](/en/pricing)