opencode-scheduler

Run AI agents on a schedule. Set up recurring tasks that execute autonomously—even when you're away.

Schedule a daily job at 9am to search Facebook Marketplace for posters under $100 and send the top 5 deals to my Telegram

This is an OpenCode plugin that uses your OS's native scheduler (launchd on macOS, systemd on Linux, Task Scheduler on Windows), with cron fallback where native backends are unavailable.

As of v1.2.0, jobs are scoped by workdir (so different projects don't collide), and scheduled runs are supervised (no overlap + optional timeout).

Fork changes (jibanez-staticduo, published as @staticduo/opencode-scheduler)

This fork contains three Linux/systemd fixes over upstream v1.3.0:

1. cronToSystemdCalendars emitted invalid OnCalendar values. The weekday component was always prefixed, even when the cron day-of-week field is a wildcard, producing expressions like * *-09-06 10:00:00. systemd does not accept * as a day-of-week, so every timer generated from such schedules failed to parse. The fork omits the weekday prefix for wildcards (e.g. *-*-* 09:00:00, *-09-06 10:00:00) and keeps generating both valid variants when day-of-month and day-of-week are both fixed.
2. Failed systemd installs orphaned unit files. installSystemdJob wrote the .service/.timer units and then ran daemon-reload/enable/start; if any of those systemctl calls failed, the tool-level error handler removed the job JSON but left the unit files behind (units without jobs). The fork rolls back freshly written units before propagating the error, so neither units nor job JSON are orphaned.
3. systemctl --user calls inherited an incomplete environment. When the parent opencode process is started without XDG_RUNTIME_DIR (and DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS), every systemctl call failed with Failed to connect to bus even though the user manager was running. All systemctl invocations now go through a helper that derives XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/run/user/<uid> (and the bus address) when they exist. Unit files are additionally written with mode 0644, because hosts with a lax umask (e.g. UGREEN NAS) generated permissions systemd complains about.

Unit tests for these fixes live in test/ (bun test).

Install

Add to your opencode.json:

{
  "plugin": ["@staticduo/opencode-scheduler"]
}

Examples

Daily deal hunting:

Schedule a daily job at 9am to search for standing desks under $300

Weekly reports:

Schedule a job every Monday at 8am to summarize my GitHub notifications

Recurring reminders:

Schedule a job every 6 hours to check if my website is up and alert me on Slack if it's down

Commands

| Command | Example | |---------|---------| | Schedule a job | Schedule a daily job at 9am to... | | List jobs | Show my scheduled jobs | | Get version | Show scheduler version | | Install skill template | Install the scheduled job best practices skill | | Get job | Show details for standing-desk | | Update job | Update standing-desk to run at 10am | | Run immediately | Run the standing-desk job now | | View logs | Show logs for standing-desk | | Delete | Delete the standing-desk job | | Global cleanup (dry run) | Run scheduler global cleanup |

How It Works

1. You describe what you want scheduled in natural language
2. The plugin writes a job file (scoped by workdir) and installs a timer in your OS scheduler
3. At the scheduled time, the OS scheduler calls a small supervisor script
4. The supervisor runs the job, appends logs, and updates job metadata

You can also trigger a job immediately via run_job—it runs fire-and-forget and appends to the same log file.

Jobs run from the working directory where you created them, picking up your opencode.json and MCP configurations.

Reliability Guarantees (Scheduled Runs)

• No overlap: if the previous run is still active, the next scheduled tick is skipped.
• Non-interactive by default: scheduled runs force OPENCODE_PERMISSION to deny "question" prompts, so jobs don't hang waiting for approvals.
• Optional timeout: set timeoutSeconds to hard-stop long runs (SIGTERM, then SIGKILL).
• Transactional systemd updates: Linux installation preserves regular files or exact symlink targets (including masked units), permissions, unit-file state, and active state on failure. Legacy unscoped timers are stopped and removed from target wants under the same slug lock while their exact files remain available. Lock release atomically renames only the token-owned lock to quarantine, so cleanup cannot delete a new owner.

Platform Support

| Platform | Scheduler backend | Notes | |------|------|------| | macOS | launchd | Full support (supervised scheduled runs) | | Linux (systemd available) | systemd --user | Full support (supervised scheduled runs) | | Linux / POSIX (no systemd) | cron (crontab) | Fallback backend (no missed-run catch-up) | | Windows | schtasks (Task Scheduler) | Supported with cron subset mapping (see limits below) |

Windows Task Scheduler limits:

• Cron expressions that use unsupported combinations (for example, month + weekday constraints, or month-only without explicit day-of-month) return a clear error with guidance.
• Complex cron schedules may be expanded into multiple Windows tasks under \\OpenCode\\opencode-job-....
• Windows scheduled runs currently do not use the supervisor pipeline used on macOS/Linux, so no-overlap and timeout enforcement are not guaranteed by the OS integration itself.

Reference

Cron Syntax

Jobs use standard 5-field cron expressions:

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

| Expression | Meaning | |------------|---------| | 0 9 * * * | Daily at 9:00 AM | | 0 */6 * * * | Every 6 hours | | 30 8 * * 1 | Mondays at 8:30 AM | | 0 9,17 * * * | At 9 AM and 5 PM daily |

Tools

| Tool | Description | |------|-------------| | schedule_job | Create a new scheduled job | | list_jobs | List all scheduled jobs | | get_version | Show scheduler and opencode versions | | get_skill | Get built-in skill templates (best practices) | | install_skill | Install a built-in skill into your repo | | get_job | Fetch job details and metadata | | update_job | Update an existing job | | delete_job | Remove a scheduled job | | cleanup_global | Remove scheduler artifacts across all scopes (dry-run by default) | | run_job | Execute a job immediately (fire-and-forget) | | job_logs | View the latest logs from a job |

schedule_job and update_job accept an optional timeoutSeconds (integer seconds). Use 0 (or omit) to disable.

Tools accept an optional format: "json" argument to return structured output with success, output, shouldContinue, and data.

Global Cleanup

Use cleanup_global to clean scheduler artifacts across all scopes. It always starts in dry-run mode unless you pass confirm: true.

• Dry run (safe default):

{ "confirm": false }

• Execute global cleanup of job definitions + lock files + scheduler units:

{ "confirm": true }

• Also delete logs and run history:

{ "confirm": true, "includeHistory": true }

The tool reports exactly how many artifacts were removed, grouped by location (jobs, locks, logs, runs, launchd/systemd units).

Storage

| What | Where | |------|-------| | Job configs (scoped) | ~/.config/opencode/scheduler/scopes/<scopeId>/jobs/*.json | | Run records (scoped) | ~/.config/opencode/scheduler/scopes/<scopeId>/runs/*.jsonl | | Locks (scoped) | ~/.config/opencode/scheduler/scopes/<scopeId>/locks/*.json | | Logs (scoped) | ~/.config/opencode/logs/scheduler/<scopeId>/*.log | | Supervisor script | ~/.config/opencode/scheduler/supervisor.pl | | launchd plists (Mac) | ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.opencode.job.<scopeId>.*.plist | | systemd units (Linux) | ~/.config/systemd/user/opencode-job-<scopeId>-*.{service,timer} | | Task Scheduler entries (Windows) | \\OpenCode\\opencode-job-<scopeId>-* |

Legacy note: older versions stored jobs in ~/.config/opencode/jobs/*.json and used unscoped unit names. delete_job removes both scoped and legacy artifacts.

Working Directory

Jobs run from a specific directory to pick up MCP configs:

Schedule a daily job at 9am from /path/to/project to run my-task

By default, jobs use the directory where you created them.

Scopes

Scopes are derived from the job's workdir (normalized absolute path). This isolates job storage, logs, and OS scheduler unit names per project.

• list_jobs defaults to the current scope (your current working directory).
• Use allScopes: true to list jobs across all scopes.
• Use includeLegacy: true to include pre-v1.2.0 jobs stored in ~/.config/opencode/jobs.

Attach URL (optional)

If you have an OpenCode backend running via opencode serve or opencode web, you can set attachUrl on a job so runs use that backend:

Update the standing-desk job to use attachUrl http://localhost:4096

Project Philosophy

• This plugin is intentionally a thin wrapper: it schedules opencode run via launchd/systemd/schtasks, with cron fallback when native backends are unavailable.
• Logs are the source of truth for scheduled runs: ~/.config/opencode/logs/*.log.
• Resiliency/reporting roadmap (not implemented): PRD-resilient-execution.md.

Built-in Skill Templates

To install the built-in skill into your project (no copy/paste), open OpenCode in your repo and run:

Install the scheduled job best practices skill

This calls the plugin’s install_skill tool and writes .opencode/skill/scheduled-job-best-practices/SKILL.md.

(If you prefer, you can also say: Get skill from opencode-scheduler and add it to my skills.)

Then add @scheduled-job-best-practices at the top of scheduled job prompts.

(Manual option: use get_skill to fetch scheduled-job-best-practices and copy it into .opencode/skill/scheduled-job-best-practices/SKILL.md.)

Troubleshooting

Jobs not running?

1. Check if installed:

   • Mac: launchctl list | grep opencode
   • Linux: systemctl --user list-timers | grep opencode
   • Windows: schtasks /Query /TN "\\OpenCode\\opencode-job-*"

2. Check logs: Show logs for my-job

3. Verify the working directory has the right opencode.json with MCP configs

MCP tools not available?

Make sure the job's working directory contains an opencode.json with your MCP server configurations.

License

MIT