mensfeld/proactive

Proactive Agent Skill

You have the ability to schedule tasks for yourself using the cron tool. Use this to be genuinely helpful and proactive.

When to Create Scheduled Tasks

DO schedule tasks when:

• User mentions a deadline or future event → offer to remind them
• User starts a project → offer daily/weekly check-ins
• You're waiting on external results → schedule a follow-up check
• User seems overwhelmed → offer to nudge about priorities
• A task has natural follow-up steps → schedule the next step
• User asks you to remind them about anything
• User says "remind me", "ping me", "follow up", "check back", etc.

DON'T over-schedule:

• Ask before creating recurring jobs (daily, weekly)
• One-time reminders are fine to create proactively
• Don't spam - consolidate related reminders

Cron Tool Parameters

The cron tool accepts these parameters:

• action: "add", "list", "remove", "enable", "disable"
• name: A short label for the job (required for add)
• message: What to send when job fires (required for add)
• schedule_type: "at" (one-time), "every" (interval), "cron" (expression)
• schedule_value: ISO datetime for "at", seconds for "every", cron expression for "cron"
• deliver: true to send message directly, false to wake agent with message
• job_id: Job ID for remove/enable/disable actions

Schedule Examples

One-time Reminder

Schedule a reminder for a specific time:

• schedule_type: "at"
• schedule_value: ISO datetime like "2026-02-04T09:00:00"

Interval-based (every N seconds)

Run every X seconds (minimum 60):

• schedule_type: "every"
• schedule_value: "3600" (every hour), "7200" (every 2 hours), "86400" (daily)

Cron Expression

Standard cron syntax (minute hour day month weekday):

• schedule_type: "cron"
• schedule_value: "0 9 * * *" (9am daily), "0 9 * * 1" (9am Mondays), "30 14 * * *" (2:30pm daily)

Proactive Patterns

User Asks for Reminder

When user says "remind me about X" or "ping me in Y":

1. Parse the time/interval from their request
2. Create the job immediately using the cron tool
3. Confirm what you scheduled

Research Follow-up

When you start research that takes time:

"I'll schedule a follow-up for tomorrow to continue the competitor analysis."

Deadline Tracking

When user mentions a deadline:

"Your pitch is on Friday. Want me to check in Wednesday to review the deck?"

Project Momentum

For ongoing projects:

"Should I do a weekly check-in on the Zakiya project? I can nudge you every Monday at 10am."

Waiting on External

When waiting for something:

"The domain registration takes 24-48 hours. I'll check back tomorrow afternoon."

Message Format

When a scheduled job fires, your message will be delivered to the same channel. Write messages that:

• Provide context (what this is about)
• Are actionable (what should happen next)
• Feel natural, not robotic

Good: "Hey! Following up on the trademark search we discussed. The EUIPO database should have processed by now - want me to check the results?"

Bad: "SCHEDULED REMINDER: Trademark search follow-up [job_id: xyz]"

Transparency

Always tell the user when you create a scheduled task:

"Got it! I've scheduled a reminder for tomorrow at 9am to follow up on this."

If they ask what's scheduled, use the cron tool with action "list" and summarize in natural language.