# 158 Claude Code Routines Clearly Explained (and why it matters)

Show Notes

Claude Code just dropped routines, and when I first saw the three options — routine, schedule, and loop — I had no idea when to use which. In this video, I break down all three modes in plain language and then demo building a routine from scratch using an X trend scanner I already had in my skill library. You'll see the full setup: GitHub connection, system prompt config, trigger options, and connector permissions. By the end, you'll know exactly which mode to use for any automation you want to build and how to get your first routine live.

Links Mentioned:
Claude Code Routines: https://claude.ai/code/routines
GitHub: https://github.com

Timestamps
00:00 – Intro: The confusion with Claude Code's new features
00:20 – The three modes: routine, schedule, and loop
00:50 – When to use each mode (simple breakdown)
01:10 – Using Claude Code to find a skill to demo
01:45 – Selecting the X scan routine
02:00 – GitHub requirement for routines explained
02:18 – Creating a new routine at claude.ai/code/routines
02:35 – Naming your routine and connecting your GitHub repo
02:50 – Dropping in your system prompt
03:05 – Setting the schedule trigger (10am Eastern daily)
03:20 – Configuring connectors and permission sets
03:40 – Running on demand and reviewing the output
04:10 – Full recap of all three modes

Key Points

* Claude Code has three automation modes — routine (runs on Anthropic's cloud, set it and forget it), schedule (needs local access, also available in Cowork), and loop (immediate execution in the CLI). Picking the wrong one means your automation won't work the way you expect.

* Routines require a GitHub repository. You can't create one without it, so get your repo connected before you start.

* The whole setup happens at claude.ai/code/routines — no coding required beyond having a system prompt in markdown format ready to paste in.

* Routines support three trigger types: time-based schedule, GitHub event, or API call. That gives you flexibility depending on whether you want it cron-based, push-based, or fired from another system.

* The X trend scanner ran automatically and surfaced several trending topic candidates with suggested content angles — zero manual research, just results ready to use.

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Corey Ganim: Claude code routines just dropped and the first time I saw it here, it looked super confusing. When do you use each of these different features that are available? So Claude actually has three different modes, routine, schedule, and loop. So if you're as confused as I was when I first looked at this, here's a breakdown of how to really think about this in a super simple format. If you want to set it and forget it, use a routine because that's going to use Anthropics Cloud Infrastructure. If you want to need local access, use the desktop schedule, which is also on cowork. And finally, if you need it right now, use loop. So for each of these three scenarios, this will give you a breakdown of when to use each of the different types. I have a full article breakdown on X that goes into the details of this. Now, what we're going to do next is we're going to actually take a look at how to build a routine by looking at some of the existing skills we already have on our system and get it deployed so that way we can use it. on a schedule without having to do any additional work outside of just setting it and forgetting it. Now we're over in Claude code. So what I did here is I asked on my local system, are there any skills that would be a great fit for a demo for a Claude routine? And it gave me a couple of different suggestions. So we're actually gonna do the X scan routine, which looks for any trending topics that are currently trending on X formally known as Twitter. So after I had it do the assessment, Claude code went through and looked through all of my different skills that I had available. I gave it the selection and it was then able to give me a full breakdown into what I needed to set up. And the biggest requirements for routine is you need to have it in GitHub. So what we did here is we created an X scanner demo and you can see it has a full breakdown of what this skill does, the scans that it ran and any of the routines. as well as a full breakdown of how we can actually build this in the web interface itself. So we're going to go ahead and do that. All right. So to create a new routine, you're going to go to claw.ai slash code slash routines. You're going to click the routines button over here on the left-hand side and then click on new routine. Now, when you do this, you're to go ahead and give it a name. So in this case, I called it the X scan demo and you're going to select a repository. of where it's going to be. So go ahead and select your GitHub repository that you have. And as you can see, this is the one that we currently have here. We're to go ahead and in the routine section, I have a markdown file that's already ready to go for the system prompt. So we'll go ahead and drop that in. Once you have your system prompt, you can choose one of three different options. You can do a schedule, a GitHub event, or an API call. So in this case, we're going to click on schedule. and we want to run this, let's say at 10 a.m. Eastern every day. So we add that as a trigger. And once we do that, we can go ahead here and unselect any of our custom connectors that we don't want it to have access to, or we can add connectors if there are ones that should have that, as well as setting the permission set for each of these. And then we click the create button. This will give us a full rundown here when we can actually go ahead and click run now if we want to run it on demand. or it'll wait until 10 a.m. to go ahead and run the actual routine. So what you can see here, I'm gonna look at one that we just did, and here's a breakdown of some of the different topics. It went through and ran the X trendsetter, and it scanned through to see what are some different topics, and you can see that it gave us a couple different ones that are strong candidates for this week to find a unique angle to make an article or a post about. So this is just a brief overview of how you can use each of the different options. And as a recap, routines for set it and forget it, and you want it to run on Anthropics infrastructure, schedules for anything that need remote or need local access, and finally loops are for when you need it right away and you do it directly in the Clawed code CLI.