Rick Steves tour schedule

It varies by the hotel's breakfast hours and the tour schedule for the day.
On average, you'll need to meet the group for the day's activities around 8:30 or 9.
You can have breakfast at any point from when the breakfast opens to when you meet the group.

Welcome to the forum! On tour days, the timing generally goes like this: hotel-provided breakfast buffet is open approximately 7 - 10 am or thereabouts, but the tour group is leaving the hotel for the day (or moving hotels) by around 8 am. So breakfast will not limit your ability to do some independent sightseeing, but the tour itself likely will.

I checked my photos from the Heart of Italy tour that I took in 2019. We generally had to be ready to leave the hotel anywhere between 8 am and 8:45 am. Breakfast was available at least one hour before we were to leave the hotel.

After taking numerous RS tours, I agree with KC. Unless you are a very early riser and get out before breakfast, and some of our tour members have been, there’s not going to be a lot of time from when breakfast opens til the time you’re off for the day. From our experience, most of our tours have started off the day between 8 and 8:30 and there have been days that it’s been earlier. Breakfasts generally have started at 7 and I know on the Village Italy tour we just were on, we were consistently asked not to be there earlier. The one nice thing about these tours is that they generally allow you quite a bit of free time on your own during the day.

Our 3 RS experiences (not Heart of Italy) are the same. There's no breakfast meet up time. You are on your own to make your way to breakfast. You will be told what time the breakfast buffet opens up and closes (it always closes well after your group activities begin) at the hotel restaurant ;and what time you need to be ready to depart for the day which is usually 8 or 8:30am. I've almost never seen a departure as late as 9am, except for a rare situation.

... so we can maybe see some sights before?

Not sure what you mean by 'see some sights', but I doubt any tourist sight would be open before breakfast.
If you get up really early you could walk around the town, but you wouldn't be able to 'go in' to anything.

If you like to get up early, it can be nice to take a walk before (or after if there’s time) breakfast. It’s a good way to get photos of the sights and the area without a lot of random people in your photos. Some of our nicest photos of Venice happened this way. But I wouldn’t think any of the sights would be open for visitors at that hour.

Take advantage of your early morning time, especially in Cinque Terre to take some photos before it’s crowded. Sites in the cities won’t be open, yet, although I have stepped into some churches at that time (don’t take photos if people are inside praying). It’s my favorite time of the day to photograph quaint lanes & major outdoor architecture without people in them.

Something that can affect this plan is that dinners are later than we usually eat at home. We found that when we were on tours, we woke up for breakfast and not hours before, although my husband loved going out & seeing the early morning delivery boats when we were in Venice.

Like others alluded to, temper your ideas of what activities you might be able to do before 7 or 8 AM. Italy, well, most of Europe, are not early risers, so aside from wandering and taking pictures of streets with no, or few, people around; there is little else to do. That said, it can be a great time for a stroll on a sunny morning, just in Rome or Florence, you likely will be out before the garbage men, so some areas look a bit shabby.