How can I set things up so the buffer being used to run an inferior shell will be autosaved periodically to a file?

The file to save in could be named "shell-2018-01-22".

I thought this would be trivial but it seems the autosave concept is deeply tied into the visiting file concepts which of course, doesn't apply for the buffer being used by the inferior shell.

The reason is because twice this past month my emacs had died. Usually its not a big deal but in these last two cases, it was frustrating enough to prompt me into trying to figure out a solution.

Thank you in advance
Perry