Poke

Schedule reminders, alarms, recurring nudges, and deferred agent tasks with OS-nativeC timers (systemd/launchd/Task Scheduler). Reply-aware with escalation, quiet hours, and side-effect hooks. Use for anything time-based — "remind me", "wake me", "every morning", "keep poking until I reply", "do X at 9am *linux only for now; mac coming VERY soon. windows eventually.".

When to Use

Use poke for reminders, alarms, recurring nudges, deferred agent work, reply-driven escalation, and reminder side effects such as scripts that start before delivery or stop when the user replies.

Core Workflow

1. Classify the poke style from the user's request.
2. Read the matching sub-skills/*.md file before building the command.
3. Check for an existing matching reminder before creating a duplicate.
4. Use --dry-run for unfamiliar flag combinations.
5. Forward plausible user replies with poke --reply; read sub-skills/replies.md first when handling replies.

Sub-skill Routing

If making or handling...	Read first
Basic one-shot, exact-time, recurring reminders, or deferred tasks	sub-skills/scheduling.md
"Keep poking until I reply", escalation, rotating tones, heartbeat-style checks, unconfirmed followups, task intervals	sub-skills/escalation.md
Pre/post actions, side-effect scripts, wake lights, or stop-on-reply hooks	sub-skills/stages.md
User replies such as done, cancel, snooze, later, or ambiguous inbound messages	sub-skills/replies.md
Quiet hours, active hours, DND, urgent delivery, or "do not wake me" behavior	sub-skills/quiet-hours.md
Multiple channels, dependency chains, or per-channel visibility	sub-skills/multi-channel.md
Listing, showing, cancelling, history, stats, presets, tones, path sets, or state layout	sub-skills/management.md
Inferred promises like "I'll check on that tomorrow" without a precise fire time	sub-skills/commitments.md
Migrating OpenClaw heartbeat polling into scheduled poke tasks	sub-skills/migration.md

Notes

• --remind is for static reminder text.
• --task is for deferred agent work and needs --agent.
• --channel and --target identify where delivery and replies happen.
• Poke has no ears; inbound user messages must be forwarded explicitly.