cron-setup

What This Skill Does

The cron-setup skill provides a standardized framework for creating, managing, and maintaining scheduled automation within the OpenClaw environment. It allows users to offload recurring tasks—such as system health checks, data synchronization, daily digests, or periodic API monitoring—to an isolated execution layer. By adhering to the OpenClaw cron conventions, you ensure that background tasks run reliably without interfering with your primary chat interactions.

Installation

To integrate this capability into your agent, use the following installation command in your terminal:

clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/brennerspear/cron-setup

Use Cases

• Automated Monitoring: Perform hourly checks on web services, databases, or project status updates and receive summaries directly in Telegram.
• Periodic Reporting: Generate daily summaries of activity feeds or weekly reviews of development progress on Mondays at 2 PM.
• System Maintenance: Execute cleanup scripts or backup routines during low-traffic windows (e.g., 4 AM) to maintain workspace hygiene.
• Reminders: Utilize the "at" kind for one-shot tasks that require notification at a specific future timestamp.

Example Prompts

1. "Setup a cron job that checks the repository status every hour and posts a summary to the PR updates topic (ID 1488) in Telegram."
2. "Create a task to clear logs every day at 4 AM. If no logs are found, make sure the agent replies with SKIP to save tokens."
3. "Schedule a weekly review for Monday at 2 PM that compiles research notes from the workspace and sends them to the research topic (ID 573)."

Tips & Limitations

• Model Selection: Always prioritize anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-5. It is the most robust model for autonomous tool calling. Avoid DeepSeek, as it currently lacks the reliability required for multi-step cron execution.
• Contextual Awareness: Cron jobs are isolated by design. Because they lack your chat history, you must include every necessary instruction, command, and API parameter within the task payload itself.
• Output Handling: Always specify Telegram notification targets using the provided topic IDs to ensure your notifications reach the correct thread.
• Fail-Safe Design: Always include explicit logic for when a job should terminate early (e.g., the 'SKIP' instruction) to prevent redundant API usage.