{"type":"post","slug":"clockwork-provides-a-native-macos-scheduler-for-local-agent-routines","title":"Clockwork provides a native macOS scheduler for local agent routines","description":"Clockwork wraps launchd in a menu-bar app for recurring local commands, and separates a task that needs attention from a task that failed.","retrieval_nugget":"Clockwork wraps launchd in a menu-bar app for recurring local commands, and separates a task that needs attention from a task that failed.","published_at":"2026-08-20","updated_at":"2026-09-12","record_date":"2026-08-20","date_kind":"published_at","topics":["ai-news","agents"],"source_cluster_ref":"c0043","source_synthesis_id":null,"source_synthesis_op_ref":null,"assigned_agent":"hermes","basket_id":"bb845773-3bce-437b-aae5-d91c181b7d21","basket_revision":1,"body_word_count":122,"schema_version":"newruntime-agent-readable-v0.2","stable_id":"post:clockwork-provides-a-native-macos-scheduler-for-local-agent-routines","status":"published","source_urls":["https://github.com/iannuttall/clockwork"],"visuals":[],"editorial_provenance":{"schema_version":"newruntime-editorial-copy-v1","content_status":"source_grounded_final","final_copy_sha256":"sha256:26c4f7ee268e89b9e6b076ee703a7e918c2a5f8b78e854079472b1fedf57143a","reviewed_at":"2026-09-12T10:00:00Z","source_evidence_count":1,"verified_claim_count":2,"site_analysis_schema_version":"newruntime-site-analysis-v1","site_object_kind":"field_note","observed_fact_count":2,"implication_count":1,"watch_condition_count":1,"related_record_count":2},"analysis":{"schema_version":"newruntime-site-analysis-v1","object_kind":"field_note","thesis":"Clockwork is a menu-bar application for running recurring commands on a Mac without learning launchd.","observed_facts":[{"text":"Clockwork supports Apple silicon and Intel Macs running macOS 14 or later and registers tasks as native scheduled jobs.","source_urls":["https://github.com/iannuttall/clockwork"]},{"text":"Exit codes, stdout and stderr from the latest 50 runs are inspectable for each task.","source_urls":["https://github.com/iannuttall/clockwork"]}],"mechanism":"A task gets a name, one or more commands, and a schedule — an interval, a daily time, or selected weekdays and a time — and Clockwork registers it as a native scheduled job.","why_now":"An orange badge means a task asked for attention, and the documentation is explicit that this is separate from failure: a task can finish successfully and still report that something needs a decision.","implications":["For scheduled agent routines that is the distinction that matters, because the useful output of a recurring agent job is usually not pass or fail but a question someone has to answer."],"evidence_boundary":"This is repository documentation for a local utility: it describes behaviour and retention of the last 50 runs without reliability data or any notion of remote reporting.","watch_conditions":["The condition to watch is whether attention states can be surfaced off the machine, because a decision request that waits in a menu bar on a closed laptop is not a notification."],"related_records":[{"url":"https://newruntime.com/posts/local-coding-agents-are-becoming-shared-workspaces","relation":"Prior coverage of unattended local agent work."},{"url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/agents","relation":"Topic hub for agent operations."}]},"routes":{"html":"https://newruntime.com/posts/clockwork-provides-a-native-macos-scheduler-for-local-agent-routines/","markdown":"https://newruntime.com/posts/clockwork-provides-a-native-macos-scheduler-for-local-agent-routines.md","json":"https://newruntime.com/posts/clockwork-provides-a-native-macos-scheduler-for-local-agent-routines.json"},"editor":{"role":"editor","name":"Andrey Reshetnikov","profile":"https://newruntime.com/owner-profile.md","profile_json":"https://newruntime.com/owner-profile.json","same_as":["https://www.linkedin.com/in/reshetnikov1/","https://t.me/lapetuse"]},"next_reads":[{"type":"topic","path":"/topics/ai-news/","url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/ai-news/","title":"Ai News","reason":"Explore the ai-news topic hub.","media_type":"text/html","markdown_url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/ai-news.md","json_url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/ai-news.json"},{"type":"topic","path":"/topics/agents/","url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/agents/","title":"Agents","reason":"Explore the agents topic hub.","media_type":"text/html","markdown_url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/agents.md","json_url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/agents.json"},{"type":"collection","path":"/posts/","url":"https://newruntime.com/posts/","title":"Field Notes","reason":"Open the latest editorial analysis.","media_type":"text/html","json_url":"https://newruntime.com/posts.json"},{"type":"collection","path":"/source-ledger.json","url":"https://newruntime.com/source-ledger.json","title":"Source Ledger","reason":"Inspect the public source evidence graph.","media_type":"application/json"}]}