⏰ Now, in this project, or every week?

In the previous tracks, everything started with you. You opened the program, wrote the request, waited, looked at the result. We call this kind of work on demand: it happens because someone asks for it, when they ask. It works very well — until the day the same task needs to happen every morning, without fail, including the morning you forgot.

That's where the axis that gives this track its name comes in: the time. The question is no longer just "what do I want it to do?" but also "when e how often should this run on its own?” There are two possible answers, and they have names: scheduled task e loop.

Here’s the module’s trap. Both do the same kind of thing—repeat work without you asking again—which is why many people choose the wrong one and then think “the automation doesn’t work.” It’s not the automation; it’s the choice. One was built for routines that span months; the other, to keep track of something that’s happening now and wraps up in a few days.

New here? One scheduled task (in English, scheduled task) is an instruction you write once, and the computer runs it on its own at a time and frequency you choose—every day at 8 a.m., every Friday at 6 p.m., or on the first of every month. You don’t open anything, click anything, or remember anything. When the time comes, it runs.

The most honest analogy is an alarm clock. You set it once, put the device in the drawer in your head, and it rings every day at the scheduled time—including on the days you swore you’d wake up on your own. The scheduled task is your digital employee’s alarm clock: it doesn’t ask if today works; it just runs.

Two characteristics matter from the start, and both come back strongly in module 6.2. First: each run starts from scratch, as if it's the first time—the task doesn't remember what it did yesterday. Second: it has no expiration date. Once configured, it stays there, running week after week until you turn it off.

Caption: notice that the pink circles are identical—each day is a new, independent run with no connection to the previous one. The only different point is Saturday, shown with a dashed line: the computer was off, and the cyan arrow shows the run being recovered later. That detail is covered in module 6.2.

New here? One loop (pronounced "loop", the English word for "laço") is a session — an open conversation with the agent — one that repeats from time to time while it remains active. Each time around, the agent does what you asked again: checks whether anything changed, tries again, adjusts. And unlike the scheduled task, it remembers everything it has already seen in previous rounds, because it never left the same conversation.

The analogy here is a night watchman. He doesn’t leave and come back tomorrow: he stays in the building all night, making the same rounds every half hour. By the third round, he already knows that the back door creaked on the first one— that accumulated knowledge is the advantage of the loop. When his shift ends, he goes home and takes the night’s memory with him.

And the turn really ends. A loop isn't meant to last forever: it expires in a few days—in practice, about three. If the session closes before then (you close the window or the program is shut down), the loop simply dies there, without trying to come back later. This isn't a defect: it's how the tool is designed. A loop exists to track something that's in progress now, not to load an entire lifetime of routines.

This is the central piece of the entire track. There are five comparison points — and each one, on its own, can already decide the choice for you. If you remember just one thing from this module, remember this table.

Caption: read from top to bottom, not from left to right. Each row is a question you ask about your situation — and the column with the best answer wins.

Where it runs. New here? O desktop app is a program with windows, icons, and buttons that you install and open with two clicks — like your browser or text editor. It's different from the terminal, that black screen where you type commands instead of clicking. The scheduled task lives in the desktop app because that’s what keeps an eye on the clock. The loop doesn’t have that requirement: it runs wherever the session is open.

Memory. This is the line that causes the most frustration for people who choose wrong. The scheduled task wakes up amnesiac every day: it only knows what’s written in the instruction you left ready for it. The loop carries everything forward — on the fifth cycle, it still knows what it saw on the first. If your situation depends on “compare with what you saw yesterday,” a scheduled task alone can’t handle it (and module 6.4 shows the trick that solves this).

Duration. One is a marathon, the other a 100-meter sprint. The scheduled task has no finish line: you configure it and it runs until you tell it to stop. The loop has a short, known timeframe — about three days — and that's a safeguard, not an annoying limit: it prevents a forgotten session from consuming resources for months.

If the PC stayed off. Here the difference is dramatic. The scheduled task notices it missed its scheduled time and runs as soon as the machine comes back online—nothing is lost, it’s just delayed. The loop has no such safety net: session closed means loop ended, period. No one will resume it for you.

Serves to. This is a summary of the four lines above. A routine that spans the calendar: scheduled. Monitoring something that’s live right now: a loop.

Five rows in a table are a lot to remember at seven in the morning. That’s why the course condenses everything into a single question, and that question gives the module its name: "do I need this now, in this project, or every week?". Three possible answers, three different paths.

Caption: the cyan branch on the left is what you already know — a direct request, with no time involved. The two pink branches are new. Notice they differ in only one way: whether the subject has an end coming soon (loop) or no end (scheduled).

With the mental model in place, the rest of the track goes into the details of each tool and then brings everything together into a routine you’ll actually use every day.