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Overview

Scheduled Jobs run Dexter prompts on a recurring or one-off schedule, starting a fresh conversation each time they fire. Use them to automate recurring factory checks, report generation, simulation runs, and data refreshes without anyone having to remember to ask. You create jobs by describing what you want automated and when — from the Scheduled page or directly in chat — and Dexter sets up the job for you. You manage them from the Scheduled page or by asking Dexter.

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Creating a Scheduled Job

From the Scheduled page — click Scheduled in the Dexter sidebar (the left panel of the Chat page) to open Scheduled tasks, then click Create task. Describe the work and when it should happen under What should Dexter do?, then click Continue in Dexter. This opens a new chat with your request, where Dexter confirms the schedule with you and creates the job. From chat — tell Dexter what to automate and when, in plain language. Dexter translates the cadence into a schedule, confirms the interpretation with you, then creates the job:
  • “Every weekday at 5am, run the simulation and generate a PDF of the results”
  • “Every Monday morning, refresh the production data”
  • “On the first of every month, rerun the capacity comparison and summarize what changed”
  • “In 2 hours, generate the quarterly throughput report”
Schedules run in your timezone unless you name a different one. If you give a time without AM or PM, Dexter asks which you meant. Dexter confirms the interpreted schedule before creating the job, so you can correct any misreading.

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Recurring vs. One-Off

  • Recurring — runs on a cron cadence (daily, weekly, monthly, custom intervals) until you pause or delete it.
  • One-off — fires once at a specific future time: “On April 1st at 8am, run the quarterly analysis.”
For complex procedures, create a custom workflow first and have the job reference it: “Run the weekly quality audit workflow every Monday at 6am.” The job prompt stays clean, and the procedure keeps improving through the workflow’s own reflection loop.

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Scheduling a Workflow Directly

A custom workflow’s detail page has a Recurring toggle. Turn it on, pick a preset (such as Daily at 08:00 or Weekdays at 05:00) or build a Custom cron expression, and click Enable schedule. The schedule uses your browser’s timezone. Edit changes it, and turning the toggle off pauses it. The workflow’s schedule also appears on the Scheduled page.

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How Scheduled Jobs Run

When a job fires:
  1. Dexter opens a new conversation with the job’s prompt as the first message.
  2. Dexter executes the instructions autonomously — running simulations, generating reports, refreshing data, anything it can do interactively.
  3. Outputs are saved exactly as if you’d asked in person: reports land in the Reports folder under Files on the Data page, model changes take effect in the factory.
  4. The conversation is saved to your conversation history under the job’s name, prefixed with Scheduled:.
Scheduled runs are ordinary Dexter conversations. Open one from your history, or from the job’s Recent runs on the Scheduled page, to audit exactly what happened — every step, tool call, and output — and follow up in that conversation if something needs attention.

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Managing Jobs

The Scheduled tasks page lists the jobs in the current factory. Search by name or prompt, or filter with All, Active, Paused, and Completed (a one-time job that has already fired). Each job shows whether it’s Repeating or One time and when it runs next; while a job is running, an Open conversation link takes you to the live run. Click a job to open its details, which show its prompt and these actions:
  • Run now — trigger the job immediately without waiting for its next scheduled slot. It’s unavailable while a run is already in progress.
  • Pause — stop the job from firing while keeping its schedule and run history.
  • Resume — pick the schedule back up. The next run is computed from now; firings missed while paused are skipped, not backfilled. A one-time job whose time has passed can’t be resumed — edit it to choose a new time.
  • Edit — describe the change under What would you like to change? and click Continue in Dexter; Dexter updates the job in a new chat.
  • Delete — remove the job permanently, along with its run history, after you confirm. Conversations from earlier runs remain available.
Below the actions, Recent runs lists each run with its status (Running, Completed, Failed, or Stopped) and an Open conversation link. You can also ask Dexter to list, inspect, or change your scheduled jobs at any time: “Move the daily report to 6am”, “Pause the daily report job while the line is down.”

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Limitations

  • One factory per job. Each job is bound to the factory it was created in. To automate work across factories, create a job in each.
  • No interactive input. Scheduled runs are autonomous — write prompts that carry all the context Dexter needs, because nobody is there to answer clarifying questions mid-run.

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Best Practices

  • Keep prompts specific. “Generate a PDF report on last week’s throughput for the CNC line, including utilization and cycle-time KPIs” beats “send me an update.”
  • Name the artifacts. Reference specific models, data sources, and naming conventions in the prompt.
  • Lean on the knowledge base. The more context Dexter has about your operation, the closer unattended runs land to what you’d have asked for.
  • Review the first runs. Check the first one or two conversations a new job produces and tune the prompt if anything’s off.
Scheduled jobs execute with your permissions. Anything Dexter does during a scheduled run has the same effect as if you’d asked interactively — changes to models, BOMs, or configurations take effect immediately.