A scheduled task turns a one-off request into a standing job. You describe it once, Claude saves your prompt as the task's instructions, and it runs on the cadence you pick (hourly, daily, weekly, weekdays, or on demand), delivering the finished thing each time. You come back to output, not a reminder.
Most scheduled tasks run in the cloud, so they fire even when your computer is asleep or the app is closed. A task that needs files or apps on your own machine runs locally instead, and that one needs the machine awake. Either way it has the same reach as any Cowork task: your connectors, skills, and files.
It lives in the "Scheduled" area on paid plans. The smart habit: run the job once by hand, confirm the output, then schedule it, because a schedule just multiplies whatever the prompt produces.