Your schedule runs with the laptop shut
Claude working on a schedule from Anthropic's computers instead of yours, and free credit for the cloud sessions you start yourself.
First, Claim The Credit
Here from the video? This is the link. Anthropic are giving people already on a Pro or Max plan a one off credit to spend on cloud sessions, $100 on Pro and $250 on Max. Claim it with the button below, or by typing /claim-credit in Claude Code, before 11:59pm Pacific time on 7 October, which is about 8am on the 8th in the UK. The claim page asks you to connect a GitHub account, which is free and takes a couple of minutes, because a cloud session works from a copy of your files kept there.
It pays for the cloud sessions you start yourself, from the web, the desktop app, the terminal or your phone, and not for routines, the scheduled jobs further down, which come out of your normal plan like everything else. Whatever you have not used by 4 November goes.
What you'll walk away with
- The link to claim the free credit, and what a cloud session and a routine are in plain English
- A prompt that sets up your first scheduled job with the rules it must keep, and runs it once so you see it working today
- The next jobs worth handing over, where the credit is best spent, and a prompt that sets up the next one
Claiming takes a couple of minutes. Setting up the first routine takes about fifteen.
Why It Works
A job scheduled on your own laptop is an assistant who can only work while you are in the office, so the moment the lid shuts they go home and the 7am job waits until you are back. That is why people buy a Mac Mini just to leave switched on, and why I ended up with a script that wakes my own Mac at twenty to nine every night. A cloud session is the same assistant working from their own desk at Anthropic, and a routine is that session on a timer, so the job gets done whether your laptop is open or not.
Step One, Your First Routine
Paste this into Claude Code, in the desktop app or the terminal. It writes the rules in first, drafts and never sends, then interviews you for the one job worth running without you. A routine works from a private GitHub repository and the apps you have connected to Claude, never the files on your laptop, so it checks what the job will be able to reach and sets up anything missing with you before it builds. Then it hands over to /schedule, which saves the routine, and runs it once so the first result is in front of you today. If you ever set one up by hand in the desktop app, choose Cloud rather than Local, because Local is a schedule on your own computer again.
Step Two, Check It Ran
Every run is a session of its own, listed on the routine's page at claude.ai/code/routines, so you can open any of them and read exactly what it did. Read the first few properly, because that is where you find out what it gets wrong. The morning after the first scheduled run, open that session and paste this into it. Anything you want changed, tell it there and have it update the routine.
Step Three, The Next Jobs
Once the first routine is working, the next step is finding out which other jobs are worth handing over. These are the ones I would try next, one at a time, and none of them needs anything from your laptop. The first four are routines and run on your plan, and the last two are cloud sessions you start yourself, which is what the free credit pays for, so that is where to spend it before 4 November.
The morning brief
Every weekday, 7am
Reads today's calendar and last night's mail and books fifteen minutes at the start of your day holding the meetings, what you need before each one and the replies already drafted. The meeting your AI books with you every morning is the full setup.
The replies
Every weekday, 6pm
Reads what came in today and leaves a draft reply in your drafts folder for every email that needs you, so the evening is reading them and pressing send. Your inbox already has the replies written walks it through.
Who owes you an answer
Fridays, 3pm
Finds every conversation where you are waiting on someone else and drafts a short nudge to each one that has gone quiet, so nothing you asked for goes cold over the weekend.
A watch on your market
Mondays, 8am
Searches the web for anything new on your competitors, your sector and your biggest clients, and leaves you a short note of what it found with a link to each source.
A long job, from your phone
Whenever you like
A cloud session does not need a timer, so start one from the Code tab in the Claude app, say a proposal drafted from the notes in your Google Drive, put the phone away and it carries on, ready to read when you are back at your desk.
When you hit your limit
Any time
If Claude stops you on your own computer because you have used your plan up for now, carry on in a cloud session, because the credit is separate from your usage limits and Anthropic's own advice is to keep going in the cloud until it runs out.
One Honest Bit
A cloud session is not your laptop. It cannot see the files sitting on your computer, only what is in the copy on GitHub, whatever it can reach through the apps you have connected to Claude and what it finds with a web search, so a job that needs a spreadsheet on your desktop has to have that spreadsheet moved somewhere it can read first.
Routines are still a preview, and while one is running nobody is there to say yes or no, so it can act in the apps you have connected without asking each time. That is why the drafts only rule goes in before anything else, why it gets only the connectors the job needs, and why the first week is for reading what it did rather than trusting it. Every run comes out of your plan like any other chat, and a routine can be set to run as often as once an hour, which uses your plan twenty-four times as fast as a daily one, so keep these to once a day or once a week, and there is a daily cap on how many can start.
Where This Goes Next
If it could not reach your mail or calendar, tools are how your AI stops being useless is which accounts to connect first. If the job you have in mind is not in the list, score the job before you hand it over is five questions that tell you whether it is worth giving to AI at all.
A routine is an agent with working hours. If the idea of an agent is still fuzzy, an AI agent is a chat with a job is the plain English version and the start of the series.
Want to get better at this?
Let's set up your agent ecosystem.
This page is one job. The whole thing is a set of them running off the same foundation, the folder your AI works out of, the brief on how you like things done, the accounts it can reach and the skills that run off all of it, so your admin gets done the way you would do it. It is what I teach one to one, on your own machine and against your own work, and the quickest way to find out what yours would look like is a proper chat about it.
Not ready for a call? Start with the free agent series, what an AI agent actually is, and build up from there.