Cron Management

Your scheduled tasks are daemon-managed external crons. They are stored in ${CTX_ROOT}/state/{agent}/crons.json and scheduled by the cortextOS daemon. Crons survive agent restarts, context compactions, and daemon restarts automatically — you do NOT need to recreate them on session start.

On Session Start

Check that your crons are registered. You do not need to recreate them.

# List all crons with next_fire_at
cortextos bus list-crons $CTX_AGENT_NAME

If a cron is missing (not in the list), add it:

cortextos bus add-cron $CTX_AGENT_NAME <name> <interval|cron-expr> "<prompt>"
# Examples:
cortextos bus add-cron $CTX_AGENT_NAME heartbeat 4h "Run heartbeat protocol"
cortextos bus add-cron $CTX_AGENT_NAME morning-briefing "0 9 * * *" "Send morning briefing"

Adding a New Cron

# Interval shorthand (s/m/h/d/w)
cortextos bus add-cron $CTX_AGENT_NAME <name> <interval> "<prompt>"

# 5-field cron expression (minute hour dom month dow)
cortextos bus add-cron $CTX_AGENT_NAME <name> "<cron-expr>" "<prompt>"

The cron is written to crons.json atomically and the scheduler is reloaded. No /loop call needed — the daemon fires crons directly into your PTY.

manualFireDisabled: If you want a cron to only fire on schedule (not manually test-fired from the dashboard), set manualFireDisabled: true in the definition. Contact the operator or use the dashboard edit form to set this flag.

Removing a Cron

cortextos bus remove-cron $CTX_AGENT_NAME <name>

Updating a Cron

Use the dashboard (/workflows/[agent]/[name]) or the bus command (if available):

cortextos bus update-cron $CTX_AGENT_NAME <name> --schedule <new-schedule>
cortextos bus update-cron $CTX_AGENT_NAME <name> --prompt "<new-prompt>"
cortextos bus update-cron $CTX_AGENT_NAME <name> --enabled false

Checking Execution History

# Recent execution log (fired / retried / failed entries)
cortextos bus get-cron-log $CTX_AGENT_NAME

# Filtered to a specific cron
cortextos bus get-cron-log $CTX_AGENT_NAME --cron <name>

Cron Expiry

External crons do not expire. They fire on schedule until disabled or removed. The old 3-day /loop expiry no longer applies.

Troubleshooting

Cron not firing:

1. cortextos bus list-crons $CTX_AGENT_NAME — confirm it is registered and has a next_fire_at
2. cortextos bus get-cron-log $CTX_AGENT_NAME — check for status: retried or status: failed entries
3. If PTY injection is failing, check the daemon log: ~/.cortextos/$CTX_INSTANCE_ID/logs/$CTX_AGENT_NAME/

Cron fires but agent does not react:

• The daemon injects [CRON: <name>] <prompt> into your PTY. If you see this in your conversation history but did not act, it was an older session.
• Check daemon log; PTY injection retries 3 times (1s/4s/16s backoff).

crons.json corrupted:

• readCrons automatically falls back to crons.json.bak on parse failure.
• If both files are bad, add crons back via cortextos bus add-cron.
• See CRONS_MIGRATION_GUIDE.md for full recovery procedures.

Crons disappeared after daemon reload (reload-to-empty):

• The daemon's lastGoodSchedule protection keeps crons firing in memory during transient corruption.
• Check stderr logs for WARNING: reload produced empty schedule to confirm this triggered.
• Repair crons.json and the scheduler will pick up the fix on the next reload.

Migration from config.json (legacy)

If your agent was set up before the external-crons migration, your crons lived in config.json. The daemon auto-migrates them to crons.json on first boot. A .crons-migrated marker file prevents re-runs. See CRONS_MIGRATION_GUIDE.md for details and manual migration instructions.