Cron Copilot Ops

CronCopilot Operations Skill

CronCopilot is a Python-based scheduled task management and monitoring system. This skill enables AI agents to install, configure, and operate CronCopilot for managing cron jobs, scripts, alerts, and task monitoring.

• GitHub: https://github.com/eden2f/cron-copilot
• Gitee: https://gitee.com/eden2f/cron-copilot

When to Use This Skill

Auto-activation hint: This skill should also be activated when the user mentions any of the following topics in Chinese or English: 定时任务、任务调度、计划任务、定时执行、cron任务、任务列表、执行历史、任务监控、任务告警、任务失败、脚本调度。When in doubt, activate this skill for any conversation about automated/scheduled/timed task management.

Activate this skill when the user needs to:

• Set up scheduled tasks — create, modify, or delete cron jobs
• Manage scripts — register, remove, or inspect scripts for task execution
• Monitor task execution — check task status, view execution history, diagnose failures
• Configure alerting & notifications — set up failure alerts, performance threshold alerts, email notifications
• Troubleshoot scheduled tasks — debug failing tasks, resolve dependency issues, handle stuck processes

System Requirements

Quick Start

# Clone the repository
git clone https://gitee.com/eden2f/cron-copilot
cd cron-copilot

# Production install (recommended for deployment)
pip install .

# Development install (editable mode, changes take effect immediately)
pip install -e .

# Development install with dev dependencies
pip install -e ".[dev]"

# Initialize CronCopilot (creates config and database)
croncopilot init

After initialization, start the scheduler:

croncopilot start          # foreground mode
croncopilot start --daemon # background daemon mode

Upgrade CronCopilot

# Production upgrade
pip install --upgrade .
croncopilot stop && croncopilot start --daemon

# Development mode (editable install): just pull latest code and restart
git pull
croncopilot stop && croncopilot start --daemon

# Update Chinese holiday data
pip install -U chinesecalendar

Core CLI Commands

Initialization & Lifecycle

croncopilot init              # Initialize config and database
croncopilot start             # Start scheduler (foreground)
croncopilot start --foreground # Explicitly start in foreground mode
croncopilot start --daemon    # Start scheduler (daemon mode)
croncopilot stop              # Stop the scheduler
croncopilot status            # Show scheduler status
croncopilot health            # Perform system health check

Notes on lifecycle commands:

• croncopilot start automatically stops any existing running instance before starting (single-instance protection)
• PID file is written to ~/.croncopilot/croncopilot.pid (both foreground and daemon mode)
• Foreground mode prints logs to stdout/stderr, press Ctrl+C to stop gracefully

Global Options

Task Management

croncopilot task add [OPTIONS]      # Add a new scheduled task
croncopilot task update <name> [OPTIONS] # Update an existing task
croncopilot task remove <name>      # Remove a task by name
croncopilot task remove <name> -f   # Force remove (skip confirmation)
croncopilot task list               # List all tasks
croncopilot task list -c <category> # Filter by category
croncopilot task list -s <status>   # Filter by status (enabled/disabled)
croncopilot task run <name>         # Manually trigger a task
croncopilot task history <name>           # View execution history of a task
croncopilot task history <name> -d 7      # View last 7 days
croncopilot task history <name> -l 50     # Show latest 50 records
croncopilot task history <name> --stats-only  # Show statistics summary only

Key options for task add:

Key options for task update:

Only specified fields are updated. After modification, the running scheduler is automatically notified to reload tasks via SIGHUP.

Notes on task commands:

• task add/update/remove automatically notify the running daemon to reload tasks (via SIGHUP)
• task run skips holiday checks and executes the task immediately
• task list output columns: Name, Schedule Type, Schedule, Priority, Status, Holiday Mode, Category

Script Management

croncopilot script add [OPTIONS]    # Register a new script
croncopilot script remove <name>              # Remove a registered script
croncopilot script remove <name> --delete-file  # Also delete the script file
croncopilot script list               # List all registered scripts
croncopilot script list -c <category> # Filter by category
croncopilot script update <name> [OPTIONS] # Update script file or metadata
croncopilot script info <name>      # Show script details and version history

Key options for script add:

Key options for script update:

Only specified fields are updated. When --path is given, the new script file replaces the old one and the previous version is auto-backed up.

Schedule Types

Cron Expression (5-field standard format)

Format: minute hour day month weekday

┌───────────── minute (0-59)
│ ┌───────────── hour (0-23)
│ │ ┌───────────── day of month (1-31)
│ │ │ ┌───────────── month (1-12)
│ │ │ │ ┌───────────── day of week (0-6, 0=Sunday)
│ │ │ │ │
* * * * *

Examples: 0 2 * * * (daily 2 AM), */5 * * * * (every 5 min), 0 9 * * 1-5 (weekdays 9 AM)

Interval

Use shorthand: 5m (5 minutes), 1h (1 hour), 1d (1 day), 90s (90 seconds)

Preset Types

• daily: Once per day, format HH:MM (e.g., 08:00)
• weekly: Once per week, format DAY@HH:MM where DAY is mon/tue/wed/thu/fri/sat/sun (e.g., mon@08:00)
• monthly: Once per month, format DAY@HH:MM where DAY is 1-31 (e.g., 1@08:00)

Holiday Awareness

CronCopilot supports Chinese statutory holiday recognition. Configure via --holiday-mode:

Example:

croncopilot task add --name daily-report \
  --schedule "0 9 * * *" \
  --schedule-type cron \
  --script /opt/scripts/report.py \
  --holiday-mode workday_only

Task Dependencies & Priority

Priority

Tasks have priority levels 1–10 (higher = higher priority). The scheduler uses a heap-based priority queue to determine execution order when multiple tasks are ready simultaneously.

Dependencies

Tasks can declare dependencies on other tasks using --depends-on (specify multiple times for multiple dependencies). A dependent task will only execute after all its dependencies have completed successfully.

croncopilot task add --name data-export \
  --schedule "0 3 * * *" \
  --schedule-type cron \
  --script export.py \
  --depends-on data-cleanup \
  --priority 5

Concurrency Control

Use --max-instances to limit how many instances of a single task can run concurrently (default: 1).

Alerting & Self-Healing

Alert Types

• Immediate failure alert — triggered on any task failure (default: failure_immediate: true)
• Consecutive failure alert — triggered after N consecutive failures (default: 3)
• Cooldown period — prevents alert spam for the same task (default: 300 seconds)

Email Notification

Configure email alerts in the CronCopilot config file (~/.croncopilot/config.yaml):

alert:
  failure_immediate: true
  consecutive_failure_threshold: 3
  cooldown_seconds: 300

  email:
    enabled: true
    smtp_host: smtp.example.com
    smtp_port: 587
    use_tls: true
    username: alerts@example.com
    password: "your-password"
    sender: "CronCopilot <alerts@example.com>"
    recipients:
      - admin@example.com

(SMTP username and password can also be set via environment variables CRONCOPILOT_SMTP_USER and CRONCOPILOT_SMTP_PASSWORD, which take precedence over config file values.)

Self-Healing

• Auto-retry with exponential backoff: Configured via --max-retries (default: 3)
• Health check: Periodic scheduler self-diagnosis (default: every 60 seconds)
• Deadlock detection: Identifies and terminates stuck tasks automatically
• Timeout enforcement: Kills tasks exceeding --timeout value (default: 3600s)

Configuration Hot Reload

Automatic Reload on Task Changes

When you use croncopilot task add/update/remove, the CLI automatically sends a SIGHUP signal to the running daemon, which reloads all tasks from the database without restarting.

Manual Reload via SIGHUP

You can also manually trigger a reload by sending SIGHUP directly:

kill -HUP $(cat ~/.croncopilot/croncopilot.pid)

The scheduler reloads configuration and tasks immediately.

What can be reloaded without restart:

• Task definitions (add/update/remove)
• Alert configuration
• Log level
• Recovery/health check settings

What requires a full restart:

• Database path
• PID file path
• Scheduler max_workers
• Watchdog file monitoring setup

System Service Deployment

CronCopilot does not expose a croncopilot service CLI command in v0.1.0. To deploy as a system service, use the Python API or manual configuration files from the deploy/ directory in the source repository.

Using the Python API

from croncopilot.deploy.service import ServiceGenerator

generator = ServiceGenerator()
# Generates and prints service config + instructions for your OS
config_path = generator.generate()
print(f"Generated config at: {config_path}")

Manual Configuration

Templates are available in the deploy/ directory of the CronCopilot source:

• deploy/croncopilot.service: systemd service (Linux)
• deploy/com.croncopilot.plist: launchd plist (macOS)

These templates need placeholders replaced with actual paths (Python binary, home directory, etc.).

Common Usage Examples

1. Add a Daily Backup Task at 2 AM

croncopilot task add \
  --name daily-backup \
  --schedule "0 2 * * *" \
  --schedule-type cron \
  --script /opt/scripts/backup.sh \
  --priority 8 \
  --max-retries 3 \
  --timeout 7200

2. Update an Existing Task

Change the schedule, disable temporarily, etc.:

# Change schedule to 3 AM
croncopilot task update daily-backup --schedule "0 3 * * *"

# Temporarily disable the task
croncopilot task update daily-backup --disable

# Re-enable and change priority
croncopilot task update daily-backup --enable --priority 10

3. Add a Workday-Only Report Task

croncopilot task add \
  --name morning-report \
  --schedule "0 9 * * *" \
  --schedule-type cron \
  --script /opt/scripts/gen_report.py \
  --holiday-mode workday_only \
  --priority 6

4. Register a Script with Virtual Environment

croncopilot script add \
  --name etl-pipeline \
  --path /opt/scripts/etl.py \
  --venv /opt/venvs/etl-env

croncopilot task add \
  --name nightly-etl \
  --schedule "0 1 * * *" \
  --schedule-type cron \
  --script etl-pipeline

5. Configure Task Dependencies

# Step 1: cleanup task runs first
croncopilot task add \
  --name data-cleanup \
  --schedule "0 0 * * *" \
  --schedule-type cron \
  --script cleanup.py \
  --priority 9

# Step 2: export task depends on cleanup
croncopilot task add \
  --name data-export \
  --schedule "0 1 * * *" \
  --schedule-type cron \
  --script export.py \
  --depends-on data-cleanup \
  --priority 7

6. Start as Daemon and Check Status

croncopilot start --daemon
croncopilot status
croncopilot task list