What Scheduled Agents Are
Scheduled Agents are Axon Agents that run repeatedly by time or frequency, such as daily email summaries, weekly market reports, recurring attachment checks, or operating chart updates. Their value is reducing repeated start-up effort, but the task should pass manual acceptance first.
Scheduling an Agent is not the end of operations. A reliable scheduled Agent needs a clear input refresh method, run time, failure policy, Trust Mode confirmation points, accepted artifact rules, and an owner review rhythm.
Axon's Scheduling Principle
The Axon path remains Assistant -> Run -> Build. Use Assistant to clarify the goal and risk, manually Run the Agent and accept the artifact, and then enable Schedule in the Build configuration. A task that has not passed manual review should not become background automation.
System capability and skills should support stable delivery, not disappear into the background. Every scheduled run should leave a run journal, artifact card, exception record, and accepted artifact so the team knows what was delivered, where it stopped, and what should change next.
Core Workflow
First, run the same task manually and confirm that source fields, data freshness, skill calls, and artifact format are acceptable. Second, define the Schedule: frequency, timezone, input refresh, owner, failure notification, and stop conditions.
Third, after scheduled execution begins, review the run journal regularly. The owner should see which inputs were used, which skills were called, whether the artifact was accepted, whether Trust Mode was triggered, and whether any failure needs human action.
Common Use Cases
Good scheduled Agent use cases include daily email summaries, public information monitoring, market weekly reports, competitor updates, finance dashboards, legal due-date reminders, trade inquiry digests, and ecommerce listing checks. The shared pattern is rhythmic input and a fixed artifact format.
When an Agent may send email, overwrite files, submit a form, or make an external commitment, scheduling does not mean auto-approval. Trust Mode should place those actions into confirmation cards so the owner reviews evidence first.
Boundaries and Poor Fits
If source data is often missing, artifact format is unstable, failure cannot be classified, or no owner will review results, the task is not a fit for scheduled automation. The worst background automation fails quietly and ships artifacts no one accepts.
Scheduled Agents should not perform unauthorized external actions. Sending, deletion, permissions, payments, customer commitments, and sensitive data handling should keep Trust Mode, stop conditions, and human confirmation boundaries.
FAQ
FAQ: When can a team enable Schedule? Enable it after the same Agent has completed manual runs, the artifact was accepted, failure boundaries are clear, and an owner knows where to review the run journal.
FAQ: What happens when a scheduled Agent fails? The failure policy should separate retryable, review-needed, and stop-required issues. Retryable issues can rerun, review-needed issues enter the owner queue, and stop-required issues pause the next run.