Run Prompts on a Schedule

Use /loop and the cron scheduling tools to run prompts repeatedly, poll for status, or set one-time reminders within a Qwen Code session.

Scheduled tasks let Qwen Code re-run a prompt automatically on an interval. Use them to poll a deployment, babysit a PR, check back on a long-running build, or remind yourself to do something later in the session.

Tasks are session-scoped: they live in the current Qwen Code process and are gone when you exit. Nothing is written to disk.

Note: Scheduled tasks are an experimental feature. Enable them with experimental.cron: true in your settings, or set QWEN_CODE_ENABLE_CRON=1 in your environment.

Schedule a recurring prompt with /loop

The /loop bundled skill is the quickest way to schedule a recurring prompt. Pass an optional interval and a prompt, and Qwen Code sets up a cron job that fires in the background while the session stays open.

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

Qwen Code parses the interval, converts it to a cron expression, schedules the job, and confirms the cadence and job ID. It then immediately executes the prompt once — you don’t have to wait for the first cron fire.

Interval syntax

Intervals are optional. You can lead with them, trail with them, or leave them out entirely.

Supported units are s for seconds, m for minutes, h for hours, and d for days. Seconds are rounded up to the nearest minute since cron has one-minute granularity. Intervals that don’t divide evenly into their unit, such as 7m or 90m, are rounded to the nearest clean interval and Qwen Code tells you what it picked.

Loop over another command

The scheduled prompt can itself be a command or skill invocation. This is useful for re-running a workflow you’ve already packaged.

/loop 20m /review-pr 1234

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

Manage loops

/loop also supports two subcommands for managing existing jobs:

/loop list

Lists all scheduled jobs with their IDs and cron expressions.

/loop clear

Cancels all scheduled jobs at once.

Set a one-time reminder

For one-shot reminders, describe what you want in natural language instead of using /loop. Qwen Code schedules a single-fire task that deletes itself after running.

remind me at 3pm to push the release branch

in 45 minutes, check whether the integration tests passed

Qwen Code pins the fire time to a specific minute and hour using a cron expression and confirms when it will fire.

Manage scheduled tasks

Ask Qwen Code in natural language to list or cancel tasks, or reference the underlying tools directly.

what scheduled tasks do I have?

cancel the deploy check job

Under the hood, Qwen Code uses these tools:

Each scheduled task has an 8-character ID you can pass to CronDelete. A session can hold up to 50 scheduled tasks at once.

How scheduled tasks run

The scheduler checks every second for due tasks and enqueues them when the session is idle. A scheduled prompt fires between your turns, not while Qwen Code is mid-response. If Qwen Code is busy when a task comes due, the prompt waits until the current turn ends.

All times are interpreted in your local timezone. A cron expression like 0 9 * * * means 9am wherever you’re running Qwen Code, not UTC.

Jitter

To avoid every session hitting the API at the same wall-clock moment, the scheduler adds a small deterministic offset to fire times:

• Recurring tasks fire up to 10% of their period late, capped at 15 minutes. An hourly job might fire anywhere from :00 to :06.
• One-shot tasks scheduled for the top or bottom of the hour (minute :00 or :30) fire up to 90 seconds early.

The offset is derived from the task ID, so the same task always gets the same offset. If exact timing matters, pick a minute that is not :00 or :30, for example 3 9 * * * instead of 0 9 * * *, and the one-shot jitter will not apply.

Three-day expiry

Recurring tasks automatically expire 3 days after creation. The task fires one final time, then deletes itself. This bounds how long a forgotten loop can run. If you need a recurring task to last longer, cancel and recreate it before it expires.

One-shot tasks do not expire on a timer — they simply delete themselves after firing once.

Cron expression reference

CronCreate accepts standard 5-field cron expressions: minute hour day-of-month month day-of-week. All fields support wildcards (*), single values (5), steps (*/15), ranges (1-5), and comma-separated lists (1,15,30).

Day-of-week uses 0 or 7 for Sunday through 6 for Saturday. When both day-of-month and day-of-week are constrained (neither is *), a date matches if either field matches — this follows standard vixie-cron semantics.

Extended syntax like L, W, ?, and name aliases such as MON or JAN is not supported.

Limitations

Session-scoped scheduling has inherent constraints:

• Tasks only fire while Qwen Code is running and idle. Closing the terminal or letting the session exit cancels everything.
• No catch-up for missed fires. If a task’s scheduled time passes while Qwen Code is busy on a long-running request, it fires once when Qwen Code becomes idle, not once per missed interval.
• No persistence across restarts. Restarting Qwen Code clears all session-scoped tasks.