Guides/Scheduling and Automation

Scheduling and Automation

Cron-based automation with APScheduler, reusable skills and playbooks, and human-in-the-loop approval gates for process workflows.

Scheduling

Schedule recurring tasks with timezone support, execution history, and manual triggers. Each schedule pairs a cron expression with a message or task sent to an agent at the specified times.

•Autonomy Mode — Master toggle that enables or disables all schedules for an agent. Schedules will not fire if autonomy is off.

•Misfire Handling — If the scheduler restarts, missed jobs within a 1-hour grace window are caught up and fired immediately.

•Distributed Locks — Standalone scheduler service with Redis distributed locks for reliable execution.

Schedule lifecycle: Create (set cron, write prompt, enable) triggers Run (scheduler fires, agent executes, log result)

Creating Schedules

Open the agent detail page and go to the scheduling section.

Click Create Schedule.

Configure: name, cron expression (e.g., 0 9 * * 1-5 for weekdays at 9 AM), message/task, timezone, and description.

Optionally select a model override (Opus, Sonnet, Haiku, or custom).

Enable or disable individual schedules with the toggle.

View execution history with status, duration, and cost.

Click Run Now to trigger a schedule immediately.

Schedules tab showing cron schedule configuration and execution history

Execution Flow

Scheduler fires and sends a POST to /api/internal/execute-task with async_mode=True.

Backend spawns a background task and returns immediately.

Scheduler polls the database every 10 seconds until execution completes.

Execution record is updated with response, cost, and duration.

Schedule API

Endpoint	Method	Description
/api/agents/{name}/schedules	GET	List schedules
/api/agents/{name}/schedules	POST	Create schedule
/api/agents/{name}/schedules/{id}	GET/PUT/DELETE	CRUD operations
/api/agents/{name}/schedules/{id}/enable	POST	Enable schedule
/api/agents/{name}/schedules/{id}/trigger	POST	Manual trigger
/api/agents/{name}/schedules/{id}/executions	GET	Execution history

Skills and Playbooks

Platform-managed skills that can be assigned to agents and invoked from the UI via the Playbooks tab or chat autocomplete.

Key Concepts

•Skill — A reusable capability defined as a markdown file (SKILL.md) stored in the platform's skills library.

•Skills Library — A GitHub repository synced to Trinity containing all available skills. Admins can trigger a sync from Settings.

•Playbook — A skill invoked from the UI. The Playbooks tab shows assigned skills with a “Run” button.

•Playbook Autocomplete — Type / in the Chat tab to see available playbooks with ghost text showing command syntax.

Managing Skills (Admin)

Go to Settings or the Skills admin page.

Sync the skills library from GitHub.

Create, edit, or delete skills (full CRUD). View skill details and usage.

Assigning Skills (Owner)

Open the agent detail page, go to the skills/playbooks section, and assign skills from the library. Skills are injected on the next agent start.

Running Playbooks (User)

Open agent detail, click the Playbooks tab, and click Run on a playbook. Or type / in the Chat tab to autocomplete a playbook command.

Skill Injection on Agent Start

When an agent starts, all assigned skills are written to the agent's .claude/commands/ directory. The agent can then use them as slash commands during execution.

Playbooks tab showing assigned skills with Run buttons

Approvals

Human-in-the-loop approval gates for process engine workflows. Processes pause at approval steps and wait for human decisions before continuing.

A process execution reaches a human_approval step. The step pauses the process (status: PAUSED).

An approval request appears in the Approvals inbox (accessible from the navigation bar).

The approver sees the process name, step description, context, and who requested it.

The approver can Approve or Reject, with an optional comment.

On approval, the process continues. On rejection, the execution is cancelled or follows the rejection path. Approvals can have configurable timeouts.

A approval_required WebSocket event is fired when a process needs human approval.

Approval API

Endpoint	Method	Description
/api/approvals	GET	List pending approvals
/api/approvals/{id}	GET	Get approval details
/api/approvals/{id}/decide	POST	Submit decision (approve/reject)

Limitations

•Execution timeout is per-agent configurable (default 15 minutes, max 2 hours).

•Parallel execution is controlled by per-agent capacity slots (default 3).

•Missed jobs are only caught up within the 1-hour grace window.

•Approvals only apply to processes with human_approval step types defined in the process YAML.

MCP Integration Skills and Playbooks