Cron scheduling

Why Cron is first-class

In the six-layer architecture, scheduled tasks sit beside event triggers as infrastructure that delivers work into Sessions:

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Cron enables periodic proactive work—dailies, patrol jobs, alarms, batch schedules.

Three schedule kinds

Type	Meaning	Example `schedule_value`
`at`	One-shot; auto-disables after run	`2026-04-25T09:00:00` (ISO, ≥1 minute ahead)
`cron`	Standard 5-field crontab	`0 9 * * ` daily 9:00 · `0 10 * 1` Monday 10:00
`every`	Fixed interval	`30m`, `2h`, `1d` (minimum 5 minutes)

Two execution modes

Mode	Meaning	When to use
`isolated` ⭐	Spin a temporary Session	Default; jobs don’t interfere
`main`	Run inside the creating Session	Need inherited files / memory / context

Delivery modes

After a job fires, output can go to:

Mode	Behavior
SESSION	Post back to a Session (default)
CHANNEL	Push to Feishu / WeCom / email
WEBHOOK	HTTP callback
LOG	Log only

If the job was created in a group chat, results auto-return to that group—no extra config.

Conflict policy

When a previous run is still executing and the next tick arrives:

Policy	Behavior
SKIP	Skip this tick
QUEUE	Wait until prior run finishes
FALLBACK_ISOLATED	Run this tick in an isolated Session

Retry policy

Max attempts: default 3
Backoff: 30s → 60s → 300s → 900s → 3600s
Retriable: timeout / rate_limit / server_error / network_error
Non-retriable: business / permission permanent_error

Agent-managed scheduling

Built-in tool manage_cron_job lets users create / list / delete jobs in chat—no admin UI required:

User: Every morning at 9, send me a digest of yesterday’s R&D progress.

Agent calls:
manage_cron_job(
    action="create",
    name="Daily R&D digest",
    schedule_type="cron",
    schedule_value="0 9 * * *",
    prompt="Summarize yesterday’s PR/MR changes, tests, and Bug progress by team",
    execution_mode="isolated",
)

On trigger:

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Typical patterns

Daily 9am digest                 → cron "0 9 * * *"
Weekly Monday 10am team report   → cron "0 10 * * 1"
Every 30m CI patrol              → every "30m"
Reminder 15m before meeting      → at "2026-04-28T09:45:00"
Nightly 2am LTM reindex          → cron "0 2 * * *"
Friday 3pm compliance audit      → cron "0 15 * * 5"
Daily 1am DOORS delta sync       → cron "0 1 * * *"

Cron vs EventTrigger

Axis	Cron	EventTrigger
Source	Clock	External events
Examples	Reports, patrols, alarms	PR review, requirement change, chat
Creation	Agent or admin UI	Admin Webhook / routing
Concurrency	Usually single instance per job	Bursty under spikes

Compose: cron can chain into EventTrigger; EventTrigger can spawn cron jobs.

Persistence & observability

MySQL persistence — survives restarts
Run history — status, duration, output, errors
Audit — create / update / delete logged per tenant
APM — each fire has a Trace ID; see Observability

Cron scheduling

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