Prompts for recurring reminder calls with Claude

Most reminders worth having repeat: the weekday start, the weekly review, the every-few-days chore. Claude handles all of these for ReminderIt, and it works out the scheduling format for you.

Here is how to phrase recurring prompts, and a peek at what Claude builds from them.

Weekdays, weekly, and custom rhythms

State the cadence and the time together. Weekdays: "Call me every weekday at 8am, Europe/London." Weekly: "Remind me every Monday at 9am to submit my report, America/New_York." Custom interval: "Ring me every 10 days at noon to change the water filter, Asia/Kolkata."

You describe the pattern in ordinary words. Claude picks the right underlying schedule; you never have to name one.

How your words become cron

For patterns tied to days of the week or month, Claude produces a cron expression. "Every weekday at 8am" becomes 0 8 * * 1-5. "Every Monday at 9am" becomes 0 9 * * 1. "9am on the 1st of each month" becomes 0 9 1 * *.

Cron is just a compact way to say minute, hour, and which days. You are welcome to ignore the syntax entirely; it is shown here only so you can see there is nothing mysterious happening.

When interval_days is the simpler fit

Some rhythms are not weekly at all: every 3 days, every 10 days, every fortnight. For these Claude uses interval_days rather than cron, because "every N days" does not map cleanly onto days of the week.

So "remind me every 14 days" is stored as interval_days 14. Same natural sentence from you, a different mechanism underneath, chosen automatically.

Example: three recurring prompts and what Claude sets

"Call me every weekday at 7:30am to walk the dog, Europe/London" leads Claude to confirm the zone and call create_reminder with cron 30 7 * * 1-5.

"Remind me every Friday at 5pm to back up my laptop, America/Chicago" becomes cron 0 17 * * 5. "Ring me every 6 days at 10am to rotate my contact lenses, Asia/Kolkata" becomes interval_days 6. Ask "Show my recurring reminders" to run list_reminders and check them all.

Editing a recurring schedule later

Changed your mind? "Move my weekday call to 8am" has Claude run update_reminder on the existing schedule. "Pause my Friday backup reminder" calls pause_reminder, and "resume it" brings it back.

To drop only the next occurrence without cancelling the whole series, say "Skip tomorrow's call" and Claude uses skip_next_occurrence. The rest of the schedule carries on as normal.