DOCS · SCHEDULING & RECURRING RUNS
Work that runs on a schedule.
Some jobs should repeat without being asked twice — the same brief every morning, the same check every Monday. A scheduled run is a recurring job you set up once and SynthOS runs on a clock. It fires on schedule while SynthOS is running — the Mac just needs to be awake — and anything that came due while you were away runs the moment you open SynthOS, so a missed brief lands late rather than not at all. This page documents exactly how that works, where the honest limits are, which plan unlocks it, and how to start, change, or stop a schedule.
THE BASICS
What a scheduled run is.
A scheduled run is a job you describe once and attach to a recurrence — every morning at 7, every weekday, the first of each month. From then on SynthOS runs it on that clock without you asking again.
When you save a recurring job, the schedule lives inside SynthOS. SynthOS keeps the clock; at the appointed time it starts the job itself, then the job finishes and steps aside until the next occurrence. You don’t have to be at the keyboard — SynthOS running and the Mac awake is all it takes — and anything that came due while you were away runs the moment you open SynthOS, so a run you stepped away from is late, never lost.
A run is the same work the app does in front of you — an agent (or a crew of them) carrying out the job you described, running real tools on your Mac, with a receipt for every action. The only difference is who started it: a clock, instead of you typing. Everything a scheduled run produces files into your vault exactly as a run you kicked off by hand would, so you can read it back when you return.
Scheduling does not give an agent any new power. A scheduled run can do exactly what the same job could do if you ran it live, under the same guardrails — it simply runs it on time, on its own.
WHAT IT IS NOT
The honest limits: SynthOS open, Mac awake.
Two things are true at once, and it matters that you hold both: SynthOS has to be running and the Mac has to be awake for a run to fire on time. A scheduled run is not a promise that work happens while your machine sleeps — but nothing you scheduled gets silently dropped either.
SynthOS has to be running. The clock lives inside SynthOS, not inside macOS. You don’t have to be at the keyboard, or watching, or in the app at all — but SynthOS itself has to be up for a run to fire at its appointed time. Running with SynthOS fully quit is not something we ship today, and we won’t claim it until it is.
The Mac must be awake. A scheduled run executes on your machine, so your machine has to be running and awake at the scheduled time. If the Mac is asleep, shut down, or out of power when a run is due, that run does not happen in its place — there is no remote server quietly doing it for you.
Nothing is silently skipped. A run that came due while you were away — SynthOS closed, the Mac asleep — isn’t thrown out. The next time you open SynthOS it catches up what it missed, so the Monday brief you weren’t there for lands when you get back. Late rather than never is the deal, and you always know which it was.
No “while you sleep” promise. We don’t claim work gets done while your computer is off or asleep, because it doesn’t. What scheduled runs give you is work that happens while you’re away from the keyboard on an awake Mac — finished and waiting when you come back — not work that happens on a sleeping one.
Keeping the machine ready is your call. If you want an early-morning run to fire while you’re still asleep, that’s a matter of leaving SynthOS open and keeping the machine awake and powered — plugged in, with macOS energy settings that don’t put it to sleep. SynthOS runs on the schedule; it does not override your Mac’s power state to wake a sleeping machine for you.
SynthOS open, the Mac awake — and nothing silently skipped. Scheduled runs do the work while you step away, and catch up what they missed the moment you’re back.
PLANS
Scheduling and your plan.
Scheduling isn’t something you buy your way into. Every plan can put work on a clock — Core, Pro, and Ultra all hold schedules, fire them, and catch up what they missed. What your plan changes is the scale the cockpit runs at, never whether a recurring job is allowed to exist.
Scheduling is included. Set recurring jobs that fire on their own clock while SynthOS runs and the Mac is awake, catch up anything they missed while you were gone, and read the brief of what got done — on Core, Pro, and Ultra alike.
The full command center: one vault, up to two agents at once, and a small included usage allowance on top of the key you bring. Schedules run here exactly as they do anywhere else.
Three vaults, up to six agents at once, voice, about 3× the included usage, and priority support — so a schedule that fans out into a crew has more room to work in.
Unlimited vaults and agents, about 8× the included usage with priority model routing, and dedicated support — for an operation whose schedule carries a lot of work at once.
SETUP
Setting up a recurring job.
You set a schedule the same way you start any other job: describe what you want, then attach a recurrence. SynthOS turns that into a recurring job it holds and fires on its clock.
Describe the job
Write the recurring job in plain language, the way you’d ask for it live — “each weekday morning, pull my inbox, calendar, and open issues, and write me a brief.” This is the instruction every run will follow.
Choose the recurrence
Pick how often it should run and when — daily at a set time, on chosen weekdays, weekly, or monthly — in your Mac’s timezone. This is the clock SynthOS will keep. You can change it later.
Set its guardrails
Confirm the limits the run inherits — a spend ceiling through your own provider key, and what it may do versus what it must pause and ask about. A job that runs while you’re away from the keyboard leans harder on these, so they’re part of setup, not an afterthought.
Save — it starts its clock
Saving puts the job on the SynthOS clock. From then on it runs on its own, without you asking, whenever SynthOS is running and the Mac is awake — and one that came due while you were gone runs when you next open SynthOS. Each run files its work and receipts into your vault, and rolls up into the brief.
# a schedule is a job + a recurrence, held inside synthos. # times are in your mac’s timezone. a run that’s due # while synthos is closed or the mac is asleep doesn’t fire # at that moment — it is caught up the next time you open # synthos, not lost. nothing about scheduling widens what an # agent is allowed to do; it only sets when it runs.
WHAT YOU COME BACK TO
The morning brief.
When scheduled runs happen while you’re away, you don’t have to reconstruct what occurred. SynthOS rolls them into a single summary — a brief of what got done — so you can catch up in one read.
The brief is a plain account of the runs that fired while you were away: what each one did, what it produced, and anything it paused to ask about. It’s a summary for reading, not a replacement for the record — every run still keeps its full receipts in your vault, so the brief is the headline and the receipts are the detail you can open underneath it.
The brief above is an illustration of the surface, not a real run. In the app it reflects the actual scheduled runs that fired since you last looked.
Because the brief is honest about what happened, it shows the things that didn’t finish too — a run that hit an error, or one that stopped to ask a question only you can answer. Nothing waits silently: if a scheduled run needs a decision, the brief is where you’ll see it, and the run holds until you make the call.
GUARDRAILS
Guardrails on scheduled runs.
A run that fires while you’re away is held to the same rules as one you watch — and in some cases held tighter. The guardrails don’t relax just because no one is looking.
Ask-first still applies. Anything destructive, irreversible, or that spends money pauses for your approval — it does not auto-approve itself because it’s running on a schedule. A run that reaches one of these stops at that point and waits; you’ll find it flagged in the brief when you return.
A receipt for every action. Every command a scheduled run executes and every result it gets is recorded, the same as a live run. A job that ran while you were away leaves the same readable audit trail, so “what did it do at 7am” always has an exact answer.
A spend ceiling holds. The limit you set on what a run can cost through your own provider key applies to scheduled runs too. When a run approaches the ceiling it stops and records why rather than quietly running up a bill while you’re away.
It stays on its own piece. A scheduled job runs its instruction and the work that follows from it — not a wider mandate. It has no more reach on a schedule than it would with you watching; the schedule sets when, never what.
The point is simple: leaving a job to run on its own should feel as safe as starting it by hand. Receipts, the spend ceiling, and ask-first are what make that true, and they ship in every tier — they are never something scheduling switches off.
MANAGING A SCHEDULE
Stopping, editing, or pausing a schedule.
A schedule is yours to change at any time. You can edit what a job does or when it runs, pause it without losing it, or remove it entirely — and you can stop a run that’s in progress.
Change the instruction, the recurrence, or the guardrails on an existing schedule. The change updates the schedule inside SynthOS and takes effect from the next run — a run already in flight finishes on its old terms.
Pause a schedule to stop future runs without deleting it. The job and its settings are kept; nothing fires while it’s paused. Resume it later and it picks up its clock again from the next scheduled time.
Stop a run that’s currently executing. As with any run, the kill-switch halts the work in flight and keeps the receipts of everything that already ran, so you can see exactly where it ended.
Delete a schedule to remove it for good. SynthOS drops it from its clock so it never fires again, and there is nothing left to catch up. The work and receipts from past runs stay in your vault — removing the schedule doesn’t erase what it already did.
Edit it, pause it, or remove it — the schedule answers to you, and stopping it never loses the record of what it already did.
KEEP READING
Put the recurring work on a clock.
Scheduled runs ship in every plan of SynthOS — the AI operating system for a company of one. Get the app and set your first recurring job, or read how the agents that carry it out actually work.
SynthOS open · Mac awake · Nothing silently skipped · Receipts & spend ceiling · Ask-first on risk.