On July 14, Anthropic announced the launch of Routines in Claude Code, now available as a research preview. Routines are self-contained automation units: developers configure a prompt, one or more repositories, connectors (Slack, Linear, Google Drive, GitHub), and at least one trigger. After setup, Anthropic's cloud infrastructure runs the task autonomously—no manual approval required and no need for a local machine to stay on.
Three Trigger Methods: Scheduled, API, and GitHub Events
Routines support three trigger mechanisms. For scheduled triggers, developers set a prompt and execution frequency (hourly, nightly, or weekly). An official example: "Every night at 2:00 AM, fetch the latest bugs from Linear, attempt to fix them, and open a draft PR." The existing /schedule CLI command has been upgraded to the Routines system.
For API triggers, each Routine gets a unique endpoint and authentication token. Developers send a POST request to that endpoint to trigger execution and receive a session URL. Anthropic says this allows Claude Code to integrate with alert systems, deploy hooks, or internal tools: "Read the alert payload, identify the affected service, and post a triage summary with initial recommendations to the #oncall channel."
For GitHub event triggers, Routines subscribe to repository events such as pull requests, pushes, issues, check runs, workflow runs, discussions, releases, and merge queues. Claude creates a new session for each matching PR and continues to track updates (including replies and CI failures), fully automating the review flow.
Where Routines Shine: PR Review, CI Analysis, Dependency Audits
Anthropic highlighted several real-world scenarios: daily automated PR review in the morning, overnight CI failure analysis (summarizing issues for the next day), weekly dependency auditing (scanning for security or version updates), and syncing technical documentation after a PR merge (detecting merges in specific modules and auto-updating docs).
Plan Limits and Usage Details
Routines are available to Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise users who have enabled Claude Code web access. Usage is counted the same as interactive sessions, deducting from subscription quotas. The daily execution caps: Pro users get up to 5 Routines per day, Max users up to 15, and Team/Enterprise users up to 25. Additional executions can be purchased via extra usage. Developers can create their first Routine at claude.ai/code or start with the /schedule command in the CLI.
The feature remains a research preview, meaning stability is not fully guaranteed. Anthropic also stated plans to expand Webhook trigger sources and support more event types in the future.