OpenAI has widened access to scheduled tasks in ChatGPT. The Scheduled management screen, previously limited to paid plans, is now open to free accounts, and paid users gain event-triggered tasks that fire a prompt when something happens in Gmail, Slack or GitHub. A sharing feature that lets you hand a task to someone else through a link arrived at the same time.
Free accounts can hold up to 3 tasks
Scheduled tasks are not new, but when a dedicated Scheduled section landed in the sidebar in June, bringing task review and editing into one place, it was restricted to Plus, Pro, Business and Enterprise. The August 25 update (US time) opens that screen to free accounts.
The number of tasks you can hold at once depends on the plan: 3 on Free and Go, 5 on Plus, 10 on Business and Edu, and 15 on Pro and Enterprise. Once you hit the ceiling, you have to pause or delete an active task, or wait for one to finish.
Free accounts also carry a frequency limit. You can schedule a one-time run or a recurring one no more often than once per day, and the timing is picked from broad windows such as morning, afternoon or night. Hourly schedules and exact delivery times still require a paid plan.
Using Gmail, Slack and GitHub activity as the trigger
The addition for paid users is the event-triggered task, which reacts to activity rather than to the clock. It runs inside Work and is available on Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Edu, plus ChatGPT for Healthcare workspaces. Free and Go accounts cannot create them, and neither can FedRAMP workspaces.
Three triggers are supported. Gmail responds to a new message and can filter by sender or subject. Slack responds to new channel messages, but you have to add @ChatGPT to every channel you want monitored. GitHub responds to supported pull request activity in an authorized repository.
To set one up, connect the service under Settings then Apps, and describe in Work what should happen and when. ChatGPT assembles a trigger, a condition and a prompt for you to review, and the task is live once any required authorization is complete. There is a run ceiling: across all of your event-triggered tasks combined, up to 30 runs per hour and 720 per day.
On Enterprise, Edu and ChatGPT for Healthcare, an administrator has to turn on Allow event-triggered scheduled tasks before members can create them. In ChatGPT for Healthcare the feature is off by default and sits outside the BAA (Business Associate Agreement), so it is explicitly not meant for protected health information.
Handing a task to someone through a link
The other addition is a share link for a task you have built. Open the task menu from Scheduled, choose Share, and a link is issued; the recipient reviews the details and creates a separate copy in their own account. Active and paused tasks qualify, while completed tasks cannot be newly shared.
What travels with the link is a snapshot of the title, the instructions, the schedule and the original time zone. The creator's name, chat history, previous run results, memories, custom instructions, attached files, and connected app data or credentials are not included. The recipient runs it with their own permissions and their own app connections.
The flip side is that anyone who can open the link can read the full set of instructions. The title can even show up in a link preview, which is why OpenAI explicitly warns against putting health information, account numbers or passwords into a task title or its instructions. Editing the original task does not refresh the link either, so to distribute the latest version you reopen the Share dialog and copy the link again.
Limits worth knowing before you start
A few details are worth checking. Scheduled tasks do not work with voice chats or GPTs. Deleting the chat a task is attached to pauses the task rather than deleting it, and any share link already issued stays alive, so cutting off access means deleting that link separately.
The desktop app is treated differently as well. Creating event-triggered tasks and editing their trigger conditions happens on the web or in supported mobile apps, while the desktop app can only display existing ones. If Scheduled does not appear there, the web version is the fallback. Codex automations, meanwhile, are a separate system with their own home.
Summary
Scheduled tasks in ChatGPT now run on free accounts up to 3 at a time, and on paid plans they can be driven by activity in Gmail, Slack and GitHub. Together with share links that pass around the task itself, the feature is drifting from simple reminders toward workflow automation. Free accounts still live with once-a-day runs and broad time windows, and share links are readable in full by whoever holds them. Deciding what to delegate, and what never to write down, is the sensible starting point.
The thumbnail image is AI-generated and for illustration only.
