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Managed Deep Agents can run agents on a cron schedule. Add one schedule file under schedules/, export a named schedule declaration, and mda deploy provisions it as a LangSmith cron after the deployment is live.
Managed Deep Agents is in private beta, available on LangSmith Cloud in the US region only. Join the waitlist to request access.

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Add a schedule

Create one file per schedule under schedules/. The file name becomes the managed schedule name. For the full project layout, see the CLI project file reference. The schedule module must export a named schedule declaration. 
from managed_deepagents import define_schedule

schedule = define_schedule(
    cron="0 8 * * 1-5",
    timezone="America/Los_Angeles",
    prompt="Write the daily digest.",
)

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Configure schedule input

Each schedule must define exactly one of:
  • prompt: A natural-language prompt. MDA converts it to a user message when the cron fires.
  • input: A structured LangGraph input object. Use this when you need to pass custom graph input instead of a single prompt.
from managed_deepagents import define_schedule

schedule = define_schedule(
    cron="30 2 * * *",
    input={
        "messages": [
            {"role": "user", "content": "Sweep stale tickets and summarize changes."}
        ]
    },
)
cron must be a standard five-field cron expression: minute, hour, day of month, month, and day of week. If timezone is omitted, LangSmith crons use UTC.

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Choose thread behavior

Schedules use ephemeral threads by default. MDA creates a fresh thread for each run and asks LangSmith to delete that temporary thread after the run completes. Use a persistent thread only when scheduled runs should accumulate durable thread state across invocations. 
from managed_deepagents import define_schedule

schedule = define_schedule(
    cron="0 3 * * *",
    prompt="Review the current project memory and list follow-up tasks.",
    thread={"mode": "persistent", "id": "nightly-memory"},
)

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Use static declarations

Schedule declarations are extracted at compile time. Keep schedule configuration statically serializable:
  • Use literals, arrays, objects, and references to top-level literal constants.
  • Do not read environment variables, call functions, spread objects, use **kwargs, or compute schedule values dynamically.
  • Put dynamic behavior in the agent, tools, middleware, or runtime context instead.

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Deploy schedules

Test the project locally with mda dev, then deploy it with mda deploy. Open deployment traces in LangSmith to inspect model calls, tool calls, errors, and latency. When the deployment reaches DEPLOYED, mda deploy searches for existing MDA-owned cron jobs on the deployed Agent Server, deletes them, and creates cron jobs for the current schedules/ declarations. Removing a local schedule file and redeploying removes the corresponding managed cron.
If you deploy with --no-wait, the CLI triggers the remote build and exits before the deployment reaches DEPLOYED, so it does not reconcile schedules during that invocation. Run mda deploy . without --no-wait when adding, changing, or removing schedules.

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Troubleshoot schedules

  • must export a named schedule declaration: Export a top-level schedule from each file in schedules/.
  • must define exactly one of prompt or input: Add either prompt or input, but not both.
  • cron must be a standard 5-field expression: Use five cron fields, not seconds-based cron syntax.
  • schedule is not static: Replace computed values with literals or top-level literal constants.
  • failed to create cron for schedule: Open the deployment URL in LangSmith and confirm the deployed Agent Server is healthy.

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Next steps

Deploy an agent

Deploy and reconcile schedule changes.

CLI reference

Look up mda deploy flags and troubleshooting.
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