Schedules

The two kinds of schedule

Really Focus runs the assistant on a recurring loop. There are two layers of schedules:

1. Built-in cycles. Five hard-wired briefings that fire automatically for every user. You don't configure them — they just happen.
2. Custom schedules. You create these. Anything from "every Friday 4pm wrap up the week" to "daily 7am, focus on overdue invoices for Acme".

The built-ins are good defaults. The custom layer is where the assistant becomes your assistant.

Built-in cycles

These run automatically in your local timezone. No setup. They appear in the Briefing tab when ready.

• Morning briefing — daily, around 8:30 AM. Today's priorities, prep notes, things to act on.
• End-of-day — daily, around 6:00 PM. What you closed, what slipped, what to log.
• Weekly review — Mondays, around 9:00 AM. The week ahead, account by account.
• Pre-meeting prep — fires before calendar events. Brief on the attendees, prior commitments, open threads.
• Goals review — periodic check-in on the bigger picture.

Custom schedules

A custom schedule is three things: when it fires, what to focus on, and where the result is delivered. You can have up to 20.

Create one in the app

1. In the Really Focus app, open Schedules from the side navigation.

2. Click New schedule. The form asks for five things:

   • Name — what you'll see in the list. e.g. "Friday wrap-up".
   • Schedule — pick a preset (every weekday morning, every Friday 4pm, every Monday 9am, monthly 1st, daily 7am) or choose Custom cron expression and write your own.
   • Custom instructions (optional) — a sentence about what the assistant should focus on this time. Example: "Focus on billing status for Acme Corp." Up to 1000 characters.
   • Deliver to — one or more of Dashboard, Email, Telegram. Telegram only appears if you've linked it.
   • Timezone — defaults to your account timezone, but you can override per schedule (useful for traveling consultants).

3. Save. The schedule's next run shows on the list and the assistant will fire on time.

Or just ask the assistant

If your Telegram is linked, you don't need a UI form at all. Tell the assistant what you want in plain English and it will set the schedule up:

• "Set up a Friday afternoon wrap-up that asks what slipped this week."
• "What schedules do I have?"
• "Pause the Monday review for the next two weeks — I'm on holiday."
• "Delete the daily money check."

Schedules created on Telegram show up immediately in the app, and vice versa.

Slash commands (optional shortcuts)

If you prefer keystrokes to sentences, the same operations have terser slash equivalents:

• /schedule list — show your schedules with ID, cron, and active/paused status.
• /schedule add "Friday wrap-up" every friday 4pm — create one. Cron strings work too: /schedule add "Monday review" 0 9 * * 1.
• /schedule remove 3 — delete by ID.
• /schedule or /schedule help — full help.

These exist for muscle-memory; they don't unlock anything natural language can't already do.

What you can write in the schedule field

The schedule field accepts both natural language and raw cron expressions. Examples:

• every weekday morning
• every friday 4pm
• every monday 9am
• monthly 1st
• daily 7am
• 0 9 * * 1-5 — raw cron, weekdays at 9 AM

Cron is validated before saving — if it's invalid, the form tells you why.

Custom instructions: the sharpest tool

The custom instructions field is what turns a generic briefing into a useful one. It's a free-form prompt the assistant honours every time the schedule fires.

Examples that work well:

• "Focus on accounts where I haven't logged time in 7+ days. Flag the ones with active scopes."
• "Summarise the Acme Corp thread this week. What's the next thing they're waiting on from me?"
• "List every commitment due in the next 14 days, grouped by client, with the original message that created it."
• "Did anything slip yesterday? Be blunt."

Treat the field like a brief to a human EA. Specifics beat vagueness.

Channels: where the result lands

Each schedule can deliver to any combination of:

• Dashboard — the briefing appears in your in-app feed. Always available.
• Email — arrives in your real inbox as a clean digest.
• Telegram — pushed to the bot. Only available if you've linked Telegram.

At least one channel must be selected. If you uncheck them all, the schedule defaults back to Dashboard.

Per-schedule actions

• Edit — change name, cron, instructions, or channels.
• Pause / Resume — stops the schedule firing without deleting it. Useful for vacation mode.
• Run now — queues an immediate cycle. Good for testing custom instructions before you wait for the cron.
• Logs — every past run, with the briefing that came out and any actions the assistant took. The audit trail.
• Delete — permanent.

Limits and quirks

• 20 schedules per user. If you hit the limit, delete one before adding another.
• One cycle per fire. If two schedules collide on the same minute, both run independently — the assistant doesn't merge them.
• Failed cycles are logged. If an LLM call or integration goes down, the schedule still ticks; the failure shows in Logs. The next run goes ahead as normal.
• Pause beats delete. If you might want a schedule back later, pause it — the logs and configuration are preserved.

Recipes worth stealing

Friday afternoon wrap

When: every friday 4pm · Channel: Email · Instructions: "What did I close this week, what slipped, what's chasing me into next week? Group by client."

Pre-week client briefing

When: every monday 7am · Channel: Telegram · Instructions: "For each active account, give me one sentence on the most important thing happening this week."

Daily money check

When: daily 8am · Channel: Dashboard · Instructions: "Any overdue invoices, any meetings yesterday I haven't logged time for, any commitments due today involving billing?"

What's next

• Connect Telegram — required for Telegram delivery and the /schedule command.
• Connect email — required for Email delivery (the forwarding-address layer is enough; you don't need OAuth).
• Back to Getting started