Scheduled automations

Orca automations run a prompt on a schedule from the CLI, so recurring triage, review, and maintenance tasks can start without you opening a worktree by hand. By the end of this page, you'll create a disabled automation, inspect it, and run it when you're ready.

Create a safe first automation

Start with --disabled while you tune the prompt and target:

orca automations create \
  --name "Weekday triage" \
  --trigger weekdays \
  --time 09:00 \
  --prompt "Triage new issues and summarize blockers" \
  --provider codex \
  --repo my-repo \
  --disabled \
  --json

--trigger accepts presets such as hourly, daily, weekdays, and weekly, plus cron expressions or RRULE strings. Use --timezone <tz> when the schedule should follow a specific IANA timezone instead of the runtime default.

Choose where runs happen

Use --repo <selector> when each run should create or select work in a repository. Use --workspace <selector> when the automation should run inside an existing Orca worktree instead:

orca automations create \
  --name "Nightly status" \
  --trigger "0 18 * * 1-5" \
  --prompt "Summarize today's changes" \
  --provider claude \
  --workspace active \
  --disabled

When you omit both target flags, Orca resolves the enclosing worktree from the current shell directory when it can.

Reuse an existing automation session

For automations that target an existing worktree, add --reuse-session when later runs should continue in the previous live automation terminal instead of starting from a blank terminal each time:

orca automations create \
  --name "Inbox digest" \
  --trigger hourly \
  --prompt "Summarize unread mail" \
  --provider codex \
  --workspace active \
  --reuse-session \
  --disabled

Use orca automations edit <automationId> --fresh-session --json to switch the automation back to a fresh terminal per run.

Review and enable

List and inspect automations before enabling them:

orca automations list --json
orca automations show <automationId> --json
orca automations edit <automationId> --enabled --json

Use edit to change the name, prompt, provider, target, schedule, or enabled state. remove deletes an automation and its run history.

Run on demand

After creating an automation, trigger it manually to check the prompt and target before waiting for the next scheduled time:

orca automations run <automationId> --json
orca automations runs --id <automationId> --json

If a run fails before it opens a workspace or reconnects to its target, open that run in Orca and click Rerun to queue a fresh manual run for the same automation.

Next steps

• Orca CLI overview — see the rest of the CLI surface for worktrees, terminals, and browser control.
• Skills registry & MCP — install the Orca CLI skill so agents can call the same commands.