scheduling-tasks

Scheduling Tasks

This skill lets you create, list, and manage scheduled tasks using the letta cron CLI. Scheduled tasks send a prompt to the agent on a timer — useful for reminders, periodic check-ins, and deferred follow-ups.

When to Use This Skill

• User asks to be reminded of something ("remind me to X at Y")
• User wants a recurring check-in ("every morning ask me about X")
• User wants a one-shot delayed message ("in 30 minutes, check on X")
• User wants to see or cancel existing scheduled tasks

CLI Usage

All commands go through letta cron via the Bash tool. Output is JSON.

Creating a Task

letta cron add --name <short-name> --description <text> --prompt <text> <schedule>

Required flags:

Schedule (pick one):

Optional flags:

Listing Tasks

letta cron list

Optional filters: --agent <id>, --conversation <id>

Getting a Single Task

letta cron get <task-id>

Binding a Task to the Right Conversation

If exact routing matters, pass both --agent and --conversation explicitly.

letta cron add will otherwise fall back to LETTA_AGENT_ID and LETTA_CONVERSATION_ID from the current shell/session. Those values may be correct for the current chat, but they can also be inherited from surrounding tooling, another conversation, or an older shell.

Safest pattern:

letta cron add \
  --name "email-check" \
  --description "Daily email summary in this conversation" \
  --prompt "Check the user's email and post a summary here." \
  --cron "0 10 * * *" \
  --agent "$AGENT_ID" \
  --conversation "$CONVERSATION_ID"

Then verify the binding explicitly:

letta cron list --agent "$AGENT_ID" --conversation "$CONVERSATION_ID"

Deleting Tasks

# Delete a specific task
letta cron delete <task-id>

# Delete all tasks for the current agent
letta cron delete --all

Examples

"Remind me every morning at 9am to walk the dog"

letta cron add \
  --name "dog-walk-reminder" \
  --description "Daily morning reminder to walk the dog" \
  --prompt "Hey! It's 9am — time to walk the dog." \
  --every 1d

Note: --every 1d fires once daily at midnight. For a specific time like 9am, use a raw cron expression:

letta cron add \
  --name "dog-walk-reminder" \
  --description "Daily 9am reminder to walk the dog" \
  --prompt "Hey! It's 9am — time to walk the dog." \
  --cron "0 9 * * *"

"Check on the deploy in 30 minutes"

letta cron add \
  --name "deploy-check" \
  --description "One-time check on deployment status" \
  --prompt "The user asked you to check on the deploy — ask them how it went." \
  --at "in 30m"

"Every weekday at 5pm, remind me to submit my timesheet"

letta cron add \
  --name "timesheet-reminder" \
  --description "Weekday 5pm timesheet reminder" \
  --prompt "Friendly reminder: don't forget to submit your timesheet before EOD!" \
  --cron "0 17 * * 1-5"

"What reminders do I have?"

letta cron list

If you need to confirm the exact conversation a task is bound to, list with explicit filters instead:

letta cron list --agent "$AGENT_ID" --conversation "$CONVERSATION_ID"

"Cancel the dog walk reminder"

First list to find the task ID, then delete:

letta cron list
# Find the task ID from the output, then:
letta cron delete <task-id>

Writing Good Prompts

The --prompt value is what gets sent to you (the agent) when the task fires. Write it as a message that will make sense when you receive it later, with enough context to act on:

• Good: "The user asked to be reminded to review the PR for the auth refactor. Check if it's still open and nudge them."
• Bad: "reminder"

Include context about what the user originally asked for, so you can give a helpful response when the prompt arrives.

Important Notes

• Minimum granularity: 1 minute. Intervals under 60 seconds are rounded up.
• Recurring tasks: No longer auto-expire. They remain active until explicitly cancelled.
• One-shot cleanup: One-shot tasks are garbage-collected 24 hours after firing.
• Timezone: Tasks use the user's local timezone by default.
• Default binding precedence: letta cron add uses --agent / --conversation first, then falls back to LETTA_AGENT_ID / LETTA_CONVERSATION_ID, then finally uses "default" for the conversation if no env var is present.
• Scheduler requirement: Tasks only fire while a Letta session is running (a WS listener must be active). If no session is running, tasks will be marked as missed.
• --at for specific times: --at "3:00pm" schedules a one-shot. If the time has already passed today, it schedules for tomorrow.
• --every for daily: --every 1d fires daily at midnight. For a specific time of day, use --cron instead (e.g. --cron "0 9 * * *" for 9am daily).

Cron Expression Reference

For --cron, use standard 5-field cron syntax:

┌───────────── minute (0-59)
│ ┌───────────── hour (0-23)
│ │ ┌───────────── day of month (1-31)
│ │ │ ┌───────────── month (1-12)
│ │ │ │ ┌───────────── day of week (0-6, Sun=0)
│ │ │ │ │
* * * * *

Common patterns:

• */5 * * * * — every 5 minutes
• 0 */2 * * * — every 2 hours
• 0 9 * * * — daily at 9am
• 0 9 * * 1-5 — weekdays at 9am
• 30 8 1 * * — 8:30am on the 1st of each month