Cron Jobs

Overview#

The Cron Jobs page gives you centralized visibility into all scheduled tasks running on your OpenClaw gateways. Cron jobs are defined in your OpenClaw configuration and execute on a recurring schedule — from periodic data syncs to automated report generation.

ClawButler monitors job execution reliability through run history tracking, success rate calculation, and consecutive failure alerts (FR-208). When a job fails repeatedly, you get notified before it becomes a silent outage. Combined with the Dashboard's Operational Pulse Bar, cron monitoring ensures your automated workflows stay healthy.

Prerequisites#

OpenClaw Configuration#

Cron jobs are configured in your OpenClaw gateway's configuration YAML under the cron section. Each job defines a schedule expression (cron syntax), the target agent, and the command or prompt to execute. Jobs run at the gateway level and are managed by the built-in scheduler.

Important: Cron jobs are gateway-global, not per-agent. The cron.list and cron.runs RPC methods operate at the gateway scope and do not accept an agentId parameter. Passing agentId to these methods will cause an error.

• -cron.list — Returns the scheduler status and all configured jobs with their schedule, next run time, and enabled state
• -cron.runs — Returns execution history with status, duration, and error details for each run
• -Schedule expressions follow standard cron syntax (e.g., '0 */6 * * *' for every 6 hours, '0 9 * * 1-5' for weekdays at 9 AM)

Expected Results#

After syncing, the Cron Jobs page displays:

• -Scheduler status showing whether the cron scheduler is active and the total number of configured jobs
• -Job list with name, schedule expression, next run time, last run time, and success rate percentage
• -Run history timeline with execution status (success, failed, skipped), duration, and error logs
• -Failure alert banners when a job has consecutive failures exceeding the configured threshold

Web Operations#

Navigate to Cron Jobs from the Insights section in the sidebar.

Job List

The job list displays all cron jobs across your connected gateways. Each row shows the job name, cron schedule expression, enabled/disabled status, next scheduled run, last execution time, and a success rate indicator. Jobs with low success rates are highlighted with an amber warning. Click any job to expand its run history.

Run History

The run history panel shows a paginated list of past executions for each job. Each entry displays the run timestamp, status badge (success in green, failed in red, skipped in gray), execution duration, and any error output. Use pagination controls to browse older runs. Failed runs include expandable error logs for debugging.

Failure Alerts

When a cron job fails consecutively beyond the configured threshold, ClawButler raises a failure alert (FR-208). The alert appears as an amber banner at the top of the Cron Jobs page and includes the job name, failure count, last error message, and a link to the run history. Alerts clear automatically when the job succeeds again.

Create / Edit Jobs

Create new cron jobs or edit existing ones on a per-agent basis. The form includes fields for job name, target agent, schedule expression (with a human-readable preview of the next 5 run times), and the command or prompt to execute. Changes are synced to the OpenClaw gateway on save.

CLI Operations#

List all cron jobs with scheduler status, schedule expressions, and success rates

$ ap cron list

View execution history for cron jobs with status, duration, and error details

$ ap cron runs

Mobile Operations#

On mobile, cron jobs are accessible from the More tab. Tap 'Cron Jobs' to see the job list and run history.

• -Job list showing name, schedule, and success rate with color-coded indicators
• -Tap a job to view its run history with status badges and timestamps
• -Pull-to-refresh to reload job status and latest run data

FAQ#