Cron & Scheduling

Run skills on a schedule using cron expressions.

Defining schedules in Agentfile.toml

Add a schedule field to any skill:

[skills.cool]
script = "skills/cool.sh"
description = "NTU COOL LMS scanning"
schedule = "0 8 * * *"           # daily at 8:00 AM

[skills.email]
script = "skills/email.sh"
description = "Email triage"
schedule = "0 */4 * * *"         # every 4 hours

The schedule uses standard 5-field cron syntax:

minute  hour  day-of-month  month  day-of-week
  0      8        *           *        *

Managing schedules at runtime

List scheduled jobs

$ aide.sh cron ls
INSTANCE  SKILL   SCHEDULE       NEXT RUN
jenny     cool    0 8 * * *      2025-06-15 08:00
jenny     email   0 */4 * * *    2025-06-15 12:00

Add a schedule

$ aide.sh cron add jenny cool "30 9 * * 1-5"
Schedule set: jenny/cool at 30 9 * * 1-5 (weekdays at 9:30 AM)

Remove a schedule

$ aide.sh cron rm jenny cool
Schedule removed: jenny/cool

Daemon mode

Scheduled jobs only run when the daemon is active:

$ aide.sh up
Daemon started (PID 12345)
Dashboard: http://localhost:3939
Cron scheduler: active (2 jobs)

Without the daemon, schedules defined in Agentfile.toml are stored but not executed.

To stop the daemon:

$ aide.sh down
Daemon stopped.

Viewing cron status in the dashboard

The dashboard at http://localhost:3939 shows a cron panel with:

All scheduled jobs across all instances
Next scheduled run time
Last execution result (exit code, duration, truncated output)
Execution history (last 10 runs per job)

Cron output and logs

Cron job output is captured in the instance log:

$ aide.sh logs jenny --filter cron
[2025-06-14 08:00:01] cron/cool: 3 courses, 2 new assignments
[2025-06-14 12:00:01] cron/email: 5 unread messages

Failed jobs (non-zero exit code) are flagged in the dashboard and logs.