Run scheduled coding workflows with Claude Code and Codex

The problem

Plenty of coding chores repeat: triage new issues every morning, look at last night's CI failures, draft Friday's release notes. You can script claude -p or codex exec with cron, but then you're writing the plumbing yourself: permissions per step, retries when the API is overloaded, not burning the plan's limit overnight, and noticing when the job quietly stops working.

How Pairbar solves it

1. Describe the job
   In the Workflows tab, choose New workflow and write it in your own words, for example "every weekday at 9, find failing tests and fix them, but ask me before changing code". Pick the folder and press ↩. Write it yourself skips the planner if you prefer.
2. Let your own Claude or Codex plan it
   The Plan with chip picks which one plans (it defaults to the one with more of its limit left). The planner can only look at the folder and usually takes under a minute. You can leave the tab and return to the same request or completed draft while Pairbar stays open. It decides the steps and what each waits for, the app, model, effort and agent per step, each step's permissions, conditions, the schedule and a goal.
3. Review the plan
   The plan opens in the editor with a banner explaining the choices. Change anything by hand, or type a change into the banner ("use Codex for the fix") to replan. Nothing is saved or run until you press Create workflow.
4. Set the guard rails
   Check each step's level (Read-only, Can run commands, Can edit files), Scheduled under Trigger (every 15m–8h, daily, weekdays or one weekday, at a time) and Skip under N% (20% by default).
5. Let it run
   Each run is a full agent turn in the background and becomes a chat you can open and continue. You get a notification when it finishes, or when a step with Ask me first is waiting, with Run it and Stop.

Waves: steps that run side by side

A workflow has up to five steps. By default each waits for the one before it; steps that wait for the same thing (or At the start) run at the same time, in the same Wave. A step on the same app as the one before continues that chat; a step on the other app, or set to New chat, starts fresh and gets the previous reply as input. Only if it said WORD lets a step run only when the previous reply ends with that word.

Ideas to start from

When it runs, and when it doesn't

• Only while Pairbar is running. A run missed while the Mac was asleep happens once when it wakes, not once for every missed time.
• A new or rescheduled workflow waits for its next time rather than running immediately.
• Skip under N% skips a scheduled run when less than that share of the plan's tightest limit is left; limits are checked before every step. Run now skips the limit check; required startup answers must still be supplied.
• Only one run of a workflow at a time: a scheduled run doesn't start while another still has a step running or waiting for you.
• Temporary errors are retried after 30 s and 60 s; a step with no activity for 10 minutes is restarted once; a step running 30 minutes is stopped as "Timed out".
• With the goal check on, a read-only last step ends with GOAL MET or GOAL NOT MET, and can Try once more.

Without Pairbar

The common ways to schedule agent work yourself: