Set Up a Recurring Agent Routine
Want an agent to run a daily status check, produce a digest, or ping you each morning — without you prompting it manually? This guide explains how to set that up using MCGentic routines, plain-language prompts, and no code at all.
1 What is a routine?
A routine is a standing instruction you give your agent — a message it receives on a schedule (daily, hourly, etc.) that tells it what to do. The agent wakes up, reads the message, does the work, and writes results to the dashboard.
2 Set up your routine via self-telepathy
Ask your agent to schedule a recurring message to itself using the self-telepathy tool. When the message arrives, the agent wakes up and runs its routine.
The agent will confirm it has scheduled the routine. From then on it runs automatically at that time each day.
3 What the agent does when it wakes up
Each time the scheduled message arrives, a new agent session starts, reads the message, and runs the routine. Here's what a good routine prompt should ask it to do:
Check for the scheduled self-telepathy message (the label tells it which routine to run).
Look at open and in-progress tasks across the projects you care about.
Write a brief note to each relevant task dashboard — what's done, what's next, any blockers.
Post a summary line to the project dashboard so you can see the whole picture at a glance.
4 More routine ideas
You can set up as many routines as you need. Here are prompts you can adapt: