cronai

Cron for AI agents. Schedule agent tasks like you schedule cron jobs.

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Automated PR reviews in 30 seconds

npx cron-ai init

# cronai.yml
crons:
  - name: pr-review
    schedule: "every hour"
    task: >
      Review all open PRs in this repo. For each PR, check out the branch,
      read the diff, and leave a review comment on GitHub covering: code quality,
      potential bugs, security issues, and test coverage. Approve if it looks good.
    notify: slack

npx cron-ai

That's it. Every hour, Claude reviews your open PRs and leaves comments on GitHub. You get a Slack notification when it's done.

More examples

crons:
  - name: pr-review
    schedule: "every hour"
    task: "Review all open PRs — check for bugs, security issues, and style. Leave comments on GitHub."
    notify: slack

  - name: dep-updates
    schedule: "every monday at 2am"
    task: "Update dependencies, run tests, open PR if passing"

  - name: bug-triage
    schedule: "every 4 hours"
    task: "Check Linear for bugs labeled 'needs-triage', add priority labels"
    notify: slack

  - name: stale-prs
    schedule: "every weekday at 9am"
    task: "Find PRs with no activity for 3+ days, ping the authors with a friendly reminder comment"

  - name: changelog
    schedule: "every friday at 5pm"
    task: "Look at all PRs merged this week, write a changelog entry and commit it"

Dashboard

$ cronai

┌─ cronai ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                                                               │
│  CRON            SCHEDULE        STATUS    LAST RUN   NEXT RUN│
│  pr-review       every hour      idle      3h ago     in 22m  │
│  dep-updates     Mon at 2am     ✓ done    1d ago     in 4d   │
│  bug-triage      every 4 hours   ⟳ running -          in 1h   │
│                                                               │
│  [↑↓] select  [r] run  [s] resume session  [d] delete        │
│  [enter] output  [q] quit                                     │
└───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

The scheduler runs in the background — close the TUI and your crons keep running. Reopen it anytime to check status.

Getting started

cronai init           # connect GitHub, Linear, Slack — creates cronai.yml
cronai                # start dashboard (auto-starts background scheduler)
cronai run pr-review  # test a single cron
cronai stop           # stop the background scheduler

Live output

Press enter on any cron to see its output. While a cron is running, output streams in real-time — watch Claude think, read files, and run commands as it happens.

Resume sessions

Press s on any cron — running or completed — to drop into the Claude session interactively. This lets you inspect what the agent did, ask follow-up questions, or continue the work.

The agent ran overnight and opened a PR but you want to tweak it? Press s and you're in the same conversation with full context.

How is this different from /loop?

Claude Code has a built-in /loop command that runs a prompt on an interval. cronai is for crons you define once and run forever.

• Runs in the background. /loop dies when you close the terminal. cronai keeps running.
• Multiple crons. /loop runs one thing. cronai manages many crons with different schedules.
• Real cron schedules. Not just "every 5 minutes" — "every monday at 2am", "every weekday at 9am".
• Dashboard. See all your crons, their status, last run time, and output in one place.
• Session resume. Press s to jump back into any completed session and keep working.
• Persistent history. Logs survive restarts. See what happened last night.
• Config as code. cronai.yml lives in your repo. Commit it, share it with the team.

Think of /loop as a personal timer. cronai is infrastructure.

Why it's small

cronai does exactly one thing: run Claude on a schedule and show you what happened.

It doesn't have GitHub integrations, Linear clients, or Slack SDKs. It doesn't need them. The agent already knows how to use gh, call APIs, and post to Slack. You just tell it what to do in plain English. cronai is just the clock.

Schedules

Write schedules in plain English. No cron syntax needed.

| Schedule | Meaning | |---|---| | every hour | Top of every hour | | every 15 minutes | Every 15 minutes | | every day at 9am | Daily at 9:00 AM | | every weekday at 9:30am | Mon-Fri at 9:30 AM | | every monday at 2pm | Mondays at 2:00 PM | | every weekend at 10am | Sat & Sun at 10:00 AM | | hourly | Same as every hour | | daily at 3pm | Same as every day at 3pm |

Standard cron expressions (0 9 * * *) also work if you prefer them.

Config

# cronai.yml
crons:
  - name: my-cron       # lowercase, alphanumeric, dashes
    schedule: "every day at 9am"
    task: "What the agent should do"
    notify: slack       # optional — Slack notification on completion
    model: sonnet       # optional — Claude model to use
    timeout: 3600       # optional — max seconds (default: 3600 / 1 hour)
    workdir: ./myrepo   # optional — working directory for the agent

How it works

cronai runs a background scheduler that fires crons on their schedules. The TUI is just a viewer — open and close it anytime.

1. cronai starts the scheduler as a background daemon (if not already running) and opens the TUI
2. When a cron fires, it spawns claude --print with streaming output
3. The TUI connects via Unix socket for real-time state updates
4. History and logs persist to ~/.cronai/ across restarts
5. Overlap prevention — if a cron is still running when its next schedule fires, it skips

Requirements

• Node.js 18+
• Claude Code CLI installed and authenticated

Design philosophy

• The agent is the integration layer. cronai doesn't talk to GitHub, Linear, or Slack. The agent does. cronai just schedules and watches.
• One process, handful of files. Small enough to understand completely. Read the whole source in one sitting.
• Small by design. New capabilities come from modifying the source — not config options, plugin systems, or abstraction layers.
• No magic. It reads YAML, runs cron, spawns a CLI, and draws a table. You can trace the entire flow in 10 minutes.

License

MIT