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intermediateAutomation25 min

Automate a recurring workflow

Turn a manual routine into a scheduled agent task that runs on its own and reports back.

Prerequisites

  • A working agent (see "Set up your first OpenClaw agent")
  • A task you repeat regularly

Once you have a working agent, the next win is handing it a repetitive job and letting it run on a schedule.

Pick a job worth automating

Good candidates are checks you do on a cadence: a morning summary, a status poll, a cleanup pass. Start with something low-risk and read-only.

Describe the task clearly

Write the instruction as if briefing a teammate — objective, inputs, and what a good result looks like.

Every morning at 8am: check the deploy status,
summarize any failures, and post the summary to #ops.

Schedule it

Create a scheduled routine so the agent fires without you.

openclaw schedule create "0 8 * * *" "morning deploy summary"

⚠ Warning

Give scheduled tasks a tightly scoped prompt. An open-ended instruction that runs unattended can wander — be explicit about what's in and out of scope.

Verify and iterate

Watch the first few runs. Tighten the wording wherever the output drifts from what you wanted.

★ Tip

Have the task report even when there's nothing to do ("all green"). Silence is ambiguous — a heartbeat tells you it actually ran.

Next steps

  • → Explore host-based routing to publish results to a site
  • → Add memory so the agent remembers past runs