The skill that turns the morning brief from a typed command into a passive feed. Cron job at 7:00 AM, macOS Launch Agent, or a shell script you can wire into anything — the brief shows up in a file or your inbox every morning before you sit down. Recipes for Mac, Linux, and Windows. Doesn’t auto-install anything; gives you the exact commands so you can review before running.
At the prompt:
aaicase> schedule brief
aaicase> email me the brief
aaicase> auto briefThe skill prints the recipe for your platform — cron line, LaunchAgent plist, Task Scheduler command — and tells you exactly what to do with it. It does not run the recipe for you. You copy, paste, and execute manually so nothing gets installed in the background that you didn’t see.
Once installed, the morning brief runs automatically at the scheduled time. Output goes to ~/.aaicase/exports/ by default; with a small modification you can email it to yourself, post to a Slack webhook, or pipe to anywhere you want.
Reasoning:
sudo for system-wide schedules; others store user-level cron in different locations. The skill can’t reliably know which.This is the rule across AAI’s system-touching skills: print the command, explain what it does, let the attorney run it.
The simplest option. Works on macOS, Linux, and any Unix-like system. Edit your crontab:
crontab -eAdd this line (runs Monday–Friday at 7:00 AM):
0 7 * * 1-5 /usr/local/bin/aaicase -p "morning brief" > ~/.aaicase/exports/daily-brief-$(date +\%Y\%m\%d).md 2>&1Breakdown:
0 7 — 7:00 AM* * 1-5 — every day of every month, but only weekdays (Mon–Fri)/usr/local/bin/aaicase — full path to the aaicase binary (run which aaicase to confirm yours)-p "morning brief" — one-shot mode, no REPL, exits when done> ~/.aaicase/exports/... — output to a file named with today’s date2>&1 — capture stderr too, so any errors land in the same fileThe \% escapes are required — % in crontab is a special character that means “end of command + standard input.” Without escaping, the date +%Y%m%d portion would truncate the line.
The macOS-native way. Create ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.aaicase.brief.plist:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN"
"http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Label</key>
<string>com.aaicase.brief</string>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>/usr/local/bin/aaicase</string>
<string>-p</string>
<string>morning brief</string>
</array>
<key>StandardOutPath</key>
<string>/Users/YOU/.aaicase/exports/daily-brief.md</string>
<key>StartCalendarInterval</key>
<dict>
<key>Hour</key>
<integer>7</integer>
<key>Minute</key>
<integer>0</integer>
</dict>
</dict>
</plist>Load it:
launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.aaicase.brief.plistAdvantages over cron on macOS:
Substitute /Users/YOU with your actual home directory. If aaicase is installed somewhere other than /usr/local/bin, update ProgramArguments — which aaicase tells you the right path.
Windows users can use Task Scheduler from the GUI or PowerShell:
$Action = New-ScheduledTaskAction `
-Execute "aaicase" `
-Argument '-p "morning brief"' `
-WorkingDirectory "$env:USERPROFILE\.aaicase\exports"
$Trigger = New-ScheduledTaskTrigger `
-Daily -At 7am
$Settings = New-ScheduledTaskSettingsSet `
-StartWhenAvailable
Register-ScheduledTask `
-TaskName "AAICASE Morning Brief" `
-Action $Action `
-Trigger $Trigger `
-Settings $SettingsThe PowerShell version captures the brief into the working directory but doesn’t pipe to a date-stamped file (PowerShell’s redirection syntax is different from bash). Wrap it in a small .ps1 script if you want per-day output files.
For attorneys who want more than just the brief, wrap multiple skills in a script and schedule the script instead of aaicase directly. Example daily-report.sh:
#!/bin/bash
DATE=$(date +%Y%m%d)
DIR=~/.aaicase/exports
mkdir -p "$DIR"
echo "=== MORNING BRIEF ===" > "$DIR/report-$DATE.md"
aaicase -p "morning brief" >> "$DIR/report-$DATE.md"
echo -e "\n=== DEADLINES THIS WEEK ===" >> "$DIR/report-$DATE.md"
aaicase -p "what deadlines this week" >> "$DIR/report-$DATE.md"
echo -e "\n=== STATUS ===" >> "$DIR/report-$DATE.md"
aaicase -p "status" >> "$DIR/report-$DATE.md"
echo -e "\n=== WHICH CASES NEED ATTENTION ===" >> "$DIR/report-$DATE.md"
aaicase -p "which cases need attention" >> "$DIR/report-$DATE.md"
echo "Full report: $DIR/report-$DATE.md"Make it executable (chmod +x daily-report.sh), then schedule it instead of aaicase directly. The result is a single Markdown file each morning with brief + this-week deadlines + status + attention-list in one document.
Pipe to mail instead of (or in addition to) writing to a file:
0 7 * * 1-5 /usr/local/bin/aaicase -p "morning brief" | \
mail -s "Morning Brief $(date +\%m/\%d)" attorney@aai.devRequires mail command configured on the machine (most Macs and Linux servers have mail via Postfix or sendmail; check with which mail).
For richer formatting, pipe to a small script that wraps the output in HTML and sends via the firm’s preferred mail relay or SMTP:
0 7 * * 1-5 /usr/local/bin/aaicase -p "morning brief" | ~/.aaicase/scripts/email-brief.shThe script is the attorney’s to write — SMTP config varies enormously by firm and isn’t something AAI can prescribe.
The morning brief is the typical use case but the time depends on the attorney’s habit:
| Use case | Recommended time | Cron line prefix |
|---|---|---|
| Read with morning coffee | 6:30 or 7:00 AM | 0 7 * * 1-5 (7:00 weekdays) |
| On laptop before commute | 5:30 or 6:00 AM | 30 5 * * 1-5 |
| Before lunch (afternoon brief) | 11:00 AM | 0 11 * * 1-5 |
| End of day recap (yesterday) | 5:00 PM | 0 17 * * 1-5 — use what changed today instead |
| Weekend cleanup | Sunday afternoon | 0 14 * * 0 |
Multiple schedules are fine — one for the morning brief, one for the end-of-day what-changed-today, one for the Friday this-week deadlines run. Each gets its own line in crontab or its own plist.
| Method | Disable | Remove |
|---|---|---|
| Cron | Comment out the line in crontab -e | Delete the line in crontab -e |
| LaunchAgent | launchctl unload ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.aaicase.brief.plist | Unload first, then delete the .plist file |
| Windows Task Scheduler | Right-click task → Disable | Unregister-ScheduledTask -TaskName "AAICASE Morning Brief" |
Verify removal: crontab -l | grep aaicase should show nothing; launchctl list | grep aaicase should show nothing.
~/.aaicase/config.json on the user account that ran aaicase --setup.
If the cron job runs as a different user (e.g. via sudo crontab -e or a system-wide crontab), it won’t find the token. Always install the cron line in the user’s own crontab (crontab -e without sudo) so it inherits the same home directory.
Claude authentication is via the Anthropic API (browser-based on first run, then cached). If the cache expires, the scheduled job will fail until the attorney re-authenticates interactively. Schedule a manual re-auth quarterly if you want to avoid silent failures.
Most likely a PATH issue. Cron runs with a minimal PATH that may not include /usr/local/bin or /opt/homebrew/bin where aaicase lives. Use the full path to the aaicase binary in the cron line (which aaicase tells you).
The cron job is running as a different user than the one that ran aaicase --setup. Run the cron as your own user (not root), or copy the token file to the cron-running user’s home (not recommended — copies of tokens proliferate the risk).
Probably an authentication issue with either Merus or Claude. Try running the exact command manually in a terminal (aaicase -p "morning brief"); if it works there but fails in cron, the difference is environment. Check env output between a regular shell and the cron environment.
Common causes: laptop was asleep at the scheduled time (LaunchAgent doesn’t wake the system), the plist has a typo (use plutil -lint ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.aaicase.brief.plist to validate), or the agent wasn’t loaded after the .plist was created (run launchctl load).
Both the cron and LaunchAgent recipes append to the same filename. If you want per-day files, use the date-stamped form in the cron line (daily-brief-$(date +\%Y\%m\%d).md), or wrap the LaunchAgent in a small shell script that handles the date suffix.
aaicase’s interactive mode uses ANSI color escapes. The -p one-shot mode typically suppresses them, but if you see \x1b[ in the output file, pipe through sed to strip:
aaicase -p "morning brief" | sed 's/\x1b\[[0-9;]*m//g' > brief.mdPart of AAI for MerusCase — code-guarded AI case intelligence for California Workers’ Comp attorneys.