Claude Code Routines: Anthropic’s Answer to Unattended Dev Automation

Anthropic has launched Claude Code Routines in research preview for Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise subscribers. Routines are saved Claude Code configurations — combining a prompt, repositories, and connectors — that run automatically on Anthropic's cloud infrastructure without requiring the developer's machine to be online. Three trigger types are supported: scheduled (hourly/daily/weekly), API (HTTP endpoint with bearer token), and GitHub events (PRs, releases, etc.), and they can be combined on a single routine. Use cases include backlog maintenance, alert triage, documentation drift detection, and cross-SDK library porting. Routines run fully autonomously with no approval prompts, so prompt quality and scope limitation are critical. Branch writes default to a 'claude/' prefix to protect long-lived branches. Routines are managed via claude.ai, the CLI, or the desktop app and draw from existing subscription usage.