Redcast Background runs and schedules
Start work from @handle, schedule repeated tasks, and understand unattended permissions.
An agent can run without an AI Chat window. Type its @handle followed by a task in root search, select it and run it. The palette closes, an Agents menu bar indicator shows activity, and the result is saved as an ordinary chat.
@docs Summarize the changes in this project's README and list anything that needs updating.Use a handle configured for one of your agents. The task runs in that agent's folder with its instructions, model and permissions.
While and after it runs
The Agents menu lists active work and can also include live coding-agent sessions. Open the run to follow it in AI Chat. A completion HUD offers Open; Notification Center banners are an optional per-agent setting and name the run rather than displaying its answer.
A background native agent uses its effort's time and tool budget. An ACP agent uses its own runtime, with Redcast's unattended delivery and permission handling.
Create a schedule
Open the agent's scheduling controls and choose a prompt, frequency and missed-run policy. Schedules can run daily, on working days or every few hours. A schedule can also append its answer to a selected note.
Prefer a self-contained prompt: identify the files or sources, the expected report and what counts as success. There may be nobody available to answer questions when it runs.
Sleep, quit and time zones
Schedules run only while Redcast is running. There is no launchd service that keeps executing after you quit. Times follow the Mac's local wall clock and adjust after clock or time-zone changes.
After launch or wake, a due run waits briefly for the network. Run once when back collapses missed occurrences into one catch-up run. Skip it discards missed occurrences. Creating, retiming or re-enabling a schedule starts its timing from that point; it does not replay old occurrences.
If the same agent is busy, a due run waits for its existing run to finish.
Permission questions in the background
The agent's In the background choice controls an operation that would normally ask:
- Ask me may show a dialog when the Mac has been used recently. It does not activate Redcast over your work, and Return defaults to declining.
- Decline refuses operations that would need a question.
- When nobody is present, an asking operation is declined rather than left waiting indefinitely.
Always Allow and Never Allow rules still apply. Only MCP servers already trusted as Always are supplied to unattended runs. Screen tools and delegated agents cannot silently capture the desktop.
Daily spend cap
A daily cap counts reported costs of scheduled runs for the local day. New scheduled runs stop starting after the cap is reached; reported costs can also stop an active capped run. Costs already reported count even if the run is cancelled or fails.
A route that reports no cost contributes no monetary amount. The cap is therefore not a guaranteed billing limit for every provider. Check AI Usage and the provider's own limits.
Run Now and manually typed @handle tasks are explicit starts: they are not held or counted by the schedule cap.
Backups
Full backup can carry agent and schedule configuration, but imported schedules arrive paused. Review the folder, command, model, permissions and output destination before enabling them on another Mac. Existing consented schedules on that Mac are treated separately during import.