Claude Code /loop: Scheduled Prompts on Autopilot

The /loop command lets you schedule a recurring prompt inside Claude Code. It fires in the background while your session stays open — perfect for polling deployments, babysitting PRs, or checking on long-running builds.

Source: Claude Code Docs — Run Prompts on a Schedule

Quick Start

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

Claude parses the interval, converts it to a cron expression, schedules the job, and confirms the cadence and job ID.

Interval Syntax

Intervals are flexible — lead with them, trail with them, or skip them entirely:

Supported units: s (seconds), m (minutes), h (hours), d (days). Seconds are rounded up to the nearest minute since cron has one-minute granularity.

Loop Over Other Commands

The scheduled prompt can be another slash command or skill:

> /loop 20m /review-pr 1234

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

One-Time Reminders

For one-shot reminders, use natural language instead of /loop:

> remind me at 3pm to push the release branch
> in 45 minutes, check whether the integration tests passed

Claude schedules a single-fire task that deletes itself after running.

Managing Tasks

> what scheduled tasks do I have?
> cancel the deploy check job

Under the hood, Claude uses three tools:

A session can hold up to 50 scheduled tasks at once.

How LearnAI Team Could Use This

• Poll publishing jobs, site builds, and broken-link checks while a Claude Code session stays open.
• Schedule recurring checks on PRs that update lessons, wiki entries, or assets.
• Use short-lived loops during launches to monitor deploy status, CI, and content QA without creating permanent automation.

Real-World Use Cases

Poll a Deployment

> /loop 5m check the deployment status on staging and notify me when it's healthy

Watch CI/CD Pipeline

> /loop 10m check if the GitHub Actions workflow on PR #42 passed

Babysit a Long Build

> /loop 15m check if the Docker build finished and report any errors

Recurring Code Review

> /loop 20m /review-pr 1234

End-of-Day Reminder

> remind me at 5pm to commit and push my changes

Important Things to Know

Session-Scoped Only

Tasks only fire while Claude Code is running and idle. Closing the terminal cancels everything. No persistence across restarts. For durable scheduling, use Desktop scheduled tasks or GitHub Actions.

3-Day Auto-Expiry

Recurring tasks automatically expire 3 days after creation. The task fires one final time, then deletes itself. This prevents forgotten loops from running forever. If you need longer, cancel and recreate before expiry.

Fires Between Your Turns

Scheduled prompts fire between your turns, not while Claude is mid-response. If Claude is busy when a task comes due, it waits until the current turn ends.

No Catch-Up

If a task’s scheduled time passes while Claude is busy, it fires once when Claude becomes idle — not once per missed interval.

Local Timezone

All times use your local timezone. 0 9 * * * means 9am wherever you’re running Claude Code, not UTC.

Jitter

The scheduler adds a small deterministic offset to avoid API thundering herds:

• Recurring tasks: Up to 10% of their period late, capped at 15 minutes
• One-shot tasks: Up to 90 seconds early if scheduled at :00 or :30

Disable Entirely

Set CLAUDE_CODE_DISABLE_CRON=1 in your environment to disable the scheduler. The cron tools and /loop become unavailable.

Cron Expression Reference

For power users, CronCreate accepts standard 5-field cron expressions: