Scheduled Tasks

Run explicit one-time or cron-scheduled prompts through the supervisor.

The tars-tasks extension exposes one consolidated tool, manage_tasks. Its actions are create, list, delete, toggle, and modify.

Create a task

A task needs a title, prompt, and either a five-field cron expression or an ISO date/time. For example:

Create a notify task named "weekly report" with schedule "0 9 * * 1" and prompt
"Summarize the build failures recorded in the approved report directory."

The task store persists to ~/.tars/data/tasks.json using cross-process locking and atomic writes.

Execution

The cron service polls every 60 seconds. Due tasks execute through the active supervisor, so a busy interactive run can defer scheduled work. A successful one-time task is disabled; a recurring task computes its next run.

Task creation requires an explicit mode. Modes control result delivery:

notify sends the completed result through the configured channel;
on-failure sends only execution failures;
on-change sends when the normalized result changes;
action-required sends warnings that require owner attention;
digest batches routine results for daily delivery;
silent records execution without sending the result.

Limits

The initiative service can propose work from explicit objectives and runtime findings, but it does not silently create cron tasks or infer authority for consequential actions. Tars is not a durable distributed job queue and does not guarantee second-level scheduling.

Use narrow prompts, avoid embedded secrets, and keep destructive automation behind deterministic confirmation or an external policy boundary.