Scheduling and the Calendar

Updated September 2026

🎯 Purpose

Add, change, finish and remove commitments, and understand where a future one lives before its day arrives.

📌 Prerequisites

• Desktop: the CALENDAR button in the corner of the prompt box.
• Phone: CAL in the bottom bar.

🔑 The rule that explains everything here

The calendar holds the future. Your note holds today.

A commitment for a day that has not arrived lives in the calendar, and nowhere else. AIOS does not create a note for that day — otherwise booking six months of appointments would leave you with six months of near-empty daily notes.

When that day arrives and its Daily Note is created, AIOS writes the day's events into its 📆 Schedule section for you. From that moment the note and the calendar are two views of one thing: edit the line, the event follows; delete the line, the event goes.

🪜 Steps — add an event

1. Open the calendar. It opens on today, with today already selected, so today's events are listed underneath without you clicking anything. Click another day when you want a different one.
2. Press + ADD.
3. Type a title and a start time. The end fills itself in an hour later — set 9:00am and the end reads 10:00am — so the common case needs one time, not two. Type your own end whenever an hour is wrong; once you have, changing the start leaves your end alone. Clear it and AIOS goes back to filling it in. The end time applies to a repeat as well as to a one-off — a repeating workday can say it runs to 5pm.
4. Read the line under the two boxes. It says the times back to you in plain words — 9:00am – 10:00am — and it is greyed while the end is the one AIOS filled in. It is there because a time field looks different in every browser and is behind a picker on a phone, so am/pm was the one thing you could not be sure of until after you saved. If the end is before the start it says so there, before you press anything.
5. Press ADD. Enter saves, Escape cancels.

📅 All-day, and things that run for several days

An event does not have to have a time. Tick All day and the time fields go away — it gets a line at the TOP of that day's Schedule reading [All Day], because the Schedule section is ordered by start time and a whole day starts at midnight.

With All day ticked you also get a through date. Set it and the event covers every day in between, not just the two ends — a conference on the 28th to the 30th is on the 29th as well. Each day's note gets its own line, counted: [All Day 1/3], [All Day 2/3], [All Day 3/3].

A note edit only affects the day you made it on. Delete [All Day 2/3] out of the middle day's note and the event stays; it simply stops covering that one day. Type the line back and it covers it again. That is deliberate: removing one day of a conference should not end the conference.

To change the whole run — its name, its first day or its last — edit it on the calendar, which is where the event itself lives. A span cannot also repeat: "every week, for three days" is not something AIOS can express, so the repeat control disappears once you set a last day.

🔁 Steps — make it repeat

1. Open the calendar and click the day it should start on.
2. Press + ADD and fill in the title and start time.
3. Pick from Repeats: Daily, Every weekday, Every weekend, Weekly, Every 2 weeks, or Monthly.
4. Press ADD.

The day you clicked is the anchor. Weekly means that weekday, Monthly means that date, and Every 2 weeks counts fortnights from it — so you never have to say the same thing twice.

A repeat is a rule, not a pile of events. It shows on every day it falls on, and ticking it off clears it for that day only — the rule returns tomorrow.

An all-day event has no time — tick All day on the form. Its line reads [All Day] where a time would be, and it sorts to the top of that day's Schedule, above everything with a clock time. AIOS will not remind you about one: there is no particular moment to be early for.

A repeat you create here is written into your Core SOP note too, in the routine section that matches its time, exactly as if you had typed it in the prompt box. That note is where routines live, so a rule that was not in it could not be read, edited, or ended — and, before this, was quietly dropped the next time you saved that note. If a routine falls on today, its line also appears in today's 📆 Schedule.

Two limits worth knowing. Repeats are set when you create an event, not when you edit one — a rule and a one-off are different things, so change one by deleting it and adding it back. And a monthly repeat has to land on the 1st to the 28th: the 31st does not exist in every month, so AIOS refuses rather than quietly moving it. For end-of-month, type close the books on the last day of every month in the prompt box.

🪜 Steps — change one

1. Click the day, then ⋯ on the event and pick Edit this event.
2. Change the title, the times, or the date — moving it to another day is a normal edit.
3. Press SAVE.

🪜 Steps — finish one

Press ⋯ on the event and pick Mark this done. If you finish it before its day, AIOS writes the line into today's Schedule and moves it to Work Completed — so the work is recorded on the day you actually did it, not the day it was booked for.

🪜 Steps — remove one

Press ⋯ and pick Delete this event. It is confirmed first, because it also removes the line from that day's note if one exists.

🔔 Reminders

Turn on EVENT ALERTS in the system bar menu (More on a phone). AIOS will tell you before a timed event starts — ten minutes before, unless that event says otherwise.

Each event chooses its own. The Remind box on the add/edit form offers No reminder, At the start time, 5, 10, 15 or 30 minutes, 1 or 2 hours, and 1 day before. Leave it alone and you get the ten minutes; set it and that event uses what you set, for good. A repeating routine carries its choice too, so "remind me an hour before standup" keeps meaning that every day it lands on.

"No reminder" is a decision and it sticks. It is not the same as leaving the box alone — an event you have silenced stays silent, and renaming or re-timing it later does not quietly hand the default back.

An all-day event has no reminder box, because there is no particular moment to be early for.

Your browser asks permission the first time — AIOS never asks on its own.

It reaches you with AIOS closed, as long as this deployment has push set up — the confirmation you see when you switch it on says which of the two you got. If it says "even when AIOS is closed", your device is subscribed and the reminder comes from the server. If it says "while AIOS is open", push is not configured here and the reminder comes from the app itself, so it can only fire while a tab or the installed app is running (backgrounded is fine).

If the toggle reads BLOCKED, notifications are switched off for this site in your browser settings and only you can turn them back on there.

Turning EVENT ALERTS off unsubscribes this device, so the server stops trying to reach it. Each device is separate: your phone and your desktop are subscribed on their own, and switching it off on one leaves the other alone.

Nothing about the event travels with the push. The message that wakes your browser is empty; AIOS then asks the server what is due and shows that. So the push service never learns the name of anything in your calendar, and what you see is what is true at the moment it appears rather than what was true when it was sent — something you completed in the meantime simply does not appear.

If you have been signed out, a push arrives and shows nothing. That is deliberate: AIOS would rather say nothing than guess at a reminder it cannot check.

A reminder is sent to your phone first, and marked urgent. Phones and tablets are sent to before desktops, and every reminder is labelled time-sensitive so your phone shows it straight away instead of holding it until it next wakes up properly. That holding is what used to make one arrive late, or not at all — a reminder is thrown away rather than shown an hour after the thing it was about.

Tapping a reminder opens AIOS, whichever device it is on: it brings the window you already have open to the front, or opens the dashboard if there is none.

Each event reminds you once, and once means once. The sender checks every few minutes and a commitment sits inside its reminder window for several of those checks — it is told what it has already mentioned, so you get one buzz per commitment per device, not one every five minutes. Move an event after its reminder has gone out and you are told again, at the new time, because that is the whole point of moving it.

Something that already started does not remind you — a missed commitment goes to the top of your plan instead, which is more useful than a notification about it.

A repeating routine reminds you exactly like a one-off. Set Remind on a repeat and you are told before it, every day it falls on. The choice belongs to the rule, so changing it once changes it for every future occurrence; to be reminded about one day and not the rest, edit that day's occurrence rather than the series.

AIOS will not buzz you to say nothing is happening. If a push arrives and there is nothing due by the time it is checked — you finished the thing, or moved it — you see nothing at all. A notification that says nothing is going on is one you learn to ignore, and then you ignore the real ones too.

🗓️ Month, week and day

Three views, and they change what you are choosing from — never what you can do. Adding, editing, finishing and deleting are the same controls in all three, because they belong to the day rather than to the view.

• Month is the grid: six weeks, so the days either side of the month are real and clickable.
• Week is seven rows, one per day, each showing what is on it. Not an hour grid — a day here is a handful of commitments, and seven columns of empty hours would tell you less than the month already does.
• Day drops the navigator entirely and gives the whole panel to one day. On a phone it is the view where a busy day fits on one screen.

‹ and › step whatever you are looking at — a month, a week or a day — and TODAY brings you back in any of them. The view you pick is remembered per device, because which one suits you depends on the screen you are looking at.

🔁 Repeating routines

Say take out the bins every day at 6am, or every Monday, or on the 1st. Routines live in your Core SOP note, not in the calendar, and the calendar shows them with a ↻ and the label routine.

A routine row carries four controls, and they do four different things.

Every one of these is behind the ⋯ button at the end of the row, and each says which it is in words before you press it.

• Open the routine in your note takes you to the line. AIOS opens your Core SOP note with the cursor already on that routine's line, which is where a routine lives and where you would go to reword it.
• Edit the whole series changes it — its name, its time and how often it repeats — without leaving the calendar. Your Core SOP note changes with it, and the form says so before you change anything.
• Skip just this day. The routine stays exactly as it is and is back tomorrow; only that one day is taken out. Press it again on the same day to put the day back. Nothing is written into Work Completed, because nothing was done — skipping a day and finishing it are different facts and AIOS records them differently.
• End this routine for good,, removing the routine's line from your Core SOP note as well as the rule. The confirmation says which one this is, because ⊘ and ✕ sit next to each other and only one of them is reversible.

It works in both directions. Change the routine on the calendar and the note follows; edit the line in your Core SOP note and the routine follows. Neither is the master copy — the note is, and the calendar writes to it.

What editing the series will not do is rewrite a line you have made your own. If you have added words to a routine's line, AIOS updates the rule and leaves your line exactly as you typed it rather than replacing it. The worst it can do is decline to rewrite its own words.

Nothing changes the TIME of a single occurrence, and that is still deliberate. What the calendar draws for a routine is a projection of the rule, so moving one day's time would either move every other day or quietly turn that day into a one-off. Removing a day is different — it says the routine is not happening then, which the rule can hold — and that is what skipping a day does.

Today's routines appear in today's 📆 Schedule section, alongside your one-offs, so that section is the whole of your day rather than just the parts of it that are unusual. That line is a copy for you to read, and deleting it skips that day — the same thing Skip just this day does on the calendar, from the other surface. The routine itself still lives in the Core SOP note, so the day is skipped rather than the routine ended, and no new event is created from the line. Type the line back and the day comes back.

Editing the line is not deleting it. Adding a word to a routine's line leaves the routine on that day — the line simply becomes yours, and AIOS stops correcting it (see below).

When you change a routine, AIOS corrects that copy for you and records the change in the System Log. It only does that while the line is exactly as it wrote it: add a word of your own and the line is yours, so AIOS leaves it untouched and writes a System Log line saying the routine has changed and its line is now out of date. Nothing you type is ever overwritten.

In the prompt box, fortnightly and quarterly are still not supported, and deliberately: a typed cadence names no starting date, and guessing one is worse than saying no. On the calendar, Every 2 weeks IS available — there you click the starting day before you pick the cadence, so nothing has to be guessed.

🔍 How to verify

1. Add an event a month out. Your notebook gains no new note — check the list.
2. It appears on that day in the calendar.
3. Add one for today. It appears in today's 📆 Schedule section as well.
4. Make a repeat that falls today. Open your Core SOP note — its line is there, under a routine heading. Open today's note — its line is in 📆 Schedule.
5. Save your Core SOP note without changing it. The repeat is still on the calendar. (If it vanishes, the routine line is missing or its cadence was reworded into something AIOS cannot read.)
6. Press ⋯ on a routine row and pick Open the routine in your note. Your Core SOP note opens with the cursor on that routine's line.
7. Press ⋯ and pick Skip just this day. It goes from that day and stays on every other one. Press it again and the day comes back. (If it disappears from every day, that was End this routine for good — the routine's line will be gone from your Core SOP note.)
8. Change its time there and save. Reload. Today's 📆 Schedule shows the new time, and the System Log says the line was corrected.
9. Press ⋯ on the future one and pick Mark this done. It leaves the calendar, and today's Work Completed gains - 2:00-3:00pm <title> ✓ [moved by AIOS …] — without you having to switch notes to see it.

🚨 When it does not work

📖 Related

The Plan and the Daily Brief, AIOS Basics: The Daily Note, Talking to AIOS

See what AIOS is All guides