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8 min

Put a workflow on a schedule

Turn a working prompt into a standing task. Describe the cadence the way you would say it out loud. Helios writes the cron expression.

5,000 free credits to start.

  1. 01

    Start from a prompt that already works

    Run the workflow by hand until the output is what you want. A schedule repeats whatever the prompt does. A task that is 80% right becomes 80% right every morning.

  2. 02

    Add a schedule trigger

    Open the workflow's triggers and add a schedule. Describe the cadence in plain words. `Every weekday at 7am`, `the first of every month`, `every four hours`. Helios turns it into a cron expression you can inspect and edit.

  3. 03

    Schedules run in UTC

    Convert your local time before you save. A standup digest meant for 9am in California is 16:00 UTC in winter and 17:00 UTC in summer.

  4. 04

    Give each run a window

    Tell the agent what period it covers. `The last 24 hours`, `the last hour`, `since Monday`. Each run starts fresh, so the window in the prompt is what keeps runs from overlapping.

  5. 05

    Say what to skip

    Runs should not send the same email twice or post an empty report. Put the rule in the prompt. `When nothing changed, post one line saying so.`

  6. 06

    Watch the first few scheduled runs

    Open the run history after the first two or three runs. Read what the agent did on a quiet day and on a busy one. Each run has a 30 minute limit, and there are no failure alerts yet, so check the history in the first week.

Try it in your workspace.

Start free, connect a tool, and write the first prompt in plain words.