Scheduling
When and how tasks run.
Schedule a task to run once at a future time, or hold it until a dependency clears.
Most tasks run as soon as you create them, the agent picks up the work, executes, and surfaces a deliverable. Scheduling is for the cases where "now" isn't the right time. You can pin a task to a specific future moment, or queue it behind another task so it only fires once its prerequisite is done.
Scheduling is the one-shot cousin of recurring. Recurring repeats on cadence; scheduling fires once.
Scheduling for a future time
When you create a task, you can set a scheduled-at time. The task moves into a PENDING state, sits patiently, and starts at the time you specified. Until then, no agent will pick it up.
Useful for:
- Embargoes. Drafts that shouldn't ship until a launch hour.
- Time-zone smarts. Posting a tweet at 9am Pacific from your 9am Eastern desk.
- Quiet hours. Background work that should run overnight when no one's watching.
Scheduled times honor your workspace timezone, not the agent's runtime location. If you say 9am, it means 9am where you are.
📸 Screenshot: the task creation modal with a "Schedule for later" toggle and a date/time picker.
Snapping past times to "now"
If you set a scheduled-at time that's in the past, say, you typed yesterday's date by mistake, Busy Bee snaps it to "now" rather than failing. The task starts immediately. Look for the system note on the task; it'll tell you the time was snapped.
Holding for a dependency
Tasks can also be queued behind other tasks. When task B depends on task A, B sits at PENDING until A reaches DONE. The moment A's approval lands, B is picked up automatically.
This is mostly handled for you, workflows wire up dependencies between their stages, and agents wire them up when they hand off mid-task, but you can also set dependencies manually from the task detail view.
Cancelling a scheduled task
If something changes before a scheduled task fires, cancel it from the Work board. Cancelled tasks don't run and don't surface for approval; they just become a permanent record of "we planned to do this and then we didn't."
Schedules vs. recurring
| Schedule | Recurring | |
|---|---|---|
| Frequency | Once | On a cadence |
| Use for | Single future moments | Repeating cadences |
| Lifecycle | Run → done | Active → paused, run forever |
| Where managed | Inside the task itself | In the Recurring Tasks page |
When in doubt: if you'd describe the work as "do this thing tomorrow at 4," it's a schedule. If you'd describe it as "do this thing every Tuesday," it's recurring.
What's next
Now that you understand a task end-to-end, see how multi-stage flows chain tasks together: Workflows.