posthog/managing-reminders

Managing reminders

This skill guides you through creating and managing PostHog reminders. A reminder is a private, human-paced nudge to yourself: it fires an in-app notification on a schedule, with no condition attached. It can optionally link to a PostHog resource.

When to use this skill

Use this skill when the user:

• Says "remind me to…", "nudge me", "ping me", or "don't let me forget"
• Wants a one-off reminder at a specific date/time
• Wants a recurring reminder (every day, weekly, every Monday, weekdays, monthly, etc.)
• Wants to be reminded to review a specific dashboard, insight, experiment, flag, survey, notebook, replay, or error
• Wants to see, change, or cancel reminders they have set

Reminder vs alert vs subscription

These three look similar but solve different jobs. Pick the right one:

• Reminder — a human-paced nudge to yourself with no condition. It just fires an in-app notification on a schedule ("remind me to review the launch dashboard every Monday"). If the user says "remind me to…", it is a reminder.
• Alert — watches an insight's metric on a schedule and notifies only when a threshold or anomaly condition is met ("tell me if signups drop below 100").
• Subscription — delivers an insight or dashboard export/snapshot on a schedule via email, Slack, or webhook ("email me this dashboard every morning").

If there is a condition to evaluate, it is an alert. If there is an export to deliver, it is a subscription. If it is just a timed nudge to a person, it is a reminder.

Scheduling shapes

A reminder uses exactly one of scheduled_at, recurrence_interval, or cron_expression. Providing zero or more than one is rejected.

One-off

Set scheduled_at to a future ISO 8601 timestamp. The reminder fires once, then becomes completed.

| User says | Field | | --------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------- | | "remind me tomorrow at 3pm" | scheduled_at: <tomorrow 15:00 in the user's tz> | | "remind me on Jan 5 at 9am" | scheduled_at: "2026-01-05T09:00:00" (+ timezone) |

Preset recurring

Set recurrence_interval to one of daily, weekly, monthly, yearly.

| User says | Field | | ------------- | -------------------------------- | | "every day" | recurrence_interval: "daily" | | "every week" | recurrence_interval: "weekly" | | "every month" | recurrence_interval: "monthly" | | "every year" | recurrence_interval: "yearly" |

Cron recurring

Set cron_expression to a 5-field cron string (min hour day-of-month month day-of-week) when the cadence is a specific weekday or time the presets can't express.

| User says | Field | | -------------------------- | --------------------------------- | | "every Monday at 9am" | cron_expression: "0 9 * * 1" | | "weekdays at 8:30" | cron_expression: "30 8 * * 1-5" | | "1st of the month at noon" | cron_expression: "0 12 1 * *" |

A reminder may fire at most 4 times per day — a more frequent cron (e.g. hourly) is rejected.

Timezone

Always pass timezone as the user's IANA zone (e.g. "America/New_York") when you know it, so wall-clock times like "9am" resolve to the right moment. If omitted, it defaults to the project timezone. Cron and preset schedules resolve in this zone; scheduled_at is an absolute instant, so include its offset or rely on the same zone.

Attaching a resource

To link the reminder to a PostHog object, set resource_type and resource_id together. The fired notification deep-links to that object. The resource must already exist in the project.

| resource_type | resource_id is the… | | ---------------- | --------------------- | | dashboard | numeric id | | insight | short_id | | experiment | numeric id | | feature_flag | numeric id | | survey | id | | notebook | short_id | | replay | session_id | | error_tracking | issue id |

Resolve the id first if the user gives you a name or URL (e.g. fetch the insight to get its short_id). Omit both fields for a standalone reminder with no linked resource.

Privacy and lifecycle

• Reminders are private to the creating user and scoped to the current project. Other users never see them.
• They fire as in-app notifications — not email, Slack, or webhook.
• A one-off becomes completed after it fires.
• A recurring reminder stays active until deleted, or until its optional end_date passes (then it becomes completed).
• A one-off whose delivery permanently fails becomes errored — surface this via reminders-list when reporting on a user's reminders.

The MCP tools

• reminder-create — create a reminder
• reminders-list — list the user's reminders (schedule, status, next fire time)
• reminder-get — get one reminder by id
• reminder-update — update title, message, schedule, timezone, end date, or attached resource (changing the schedule recomputes the next fire time)
• reminder-delete — delete a reminder, which stops it firing

Worked example

User: "Remind me to review the launch dashboard every Monday at 9am."

1. Resolve the dashboard id (e.g. dashboard 67).
2. Pick the schedule shape: a specific weekday + time → cron.
3. Pass the user's timezone if known.
4. Call reminder-create:

{
  "title": "Review the launch dashboard",
  "resource_type": "dashboard",
  "resource_id": "67",
  "cron_expression": "0 9 * * 1",
  "timezone": "America/New_York"
}

Confirm back to the user when it will next fire (use next_fire_at from the response), and that it will keep firing weekly until they delete it.