Automation / schedules

Cron

Make your application do things while you sleep. Cron gives recurring work a schedule, so important tasks run without someone opening your app and pressing a button.

The idea

Imagine building a personal finance application. Every morning at 8 AM, you want it to check a person's expenses and prepare a summary. Cron lets that work happen automatically, even when nobody has the application open.

Interactive demo

My Automations

Recurring work, ready before you are.

AutomationScheduleStatusAction

Morning financial report
Every day, 8 AMActive
Weekly customer summary
MondaysActive
Database cleanup
SundaysActive

Execution history

Latest runs

Run an automation to see its result here. No jobs have been run in this demo yet.

This is a simulation: automations and run history reset when you refresh.

Behind the scenes

Clock
Scheduled trigger
Function
Result

At the scheduled time, the trigger starts your function. It does the work and records the result.

What could you build?

Daily reports, recurring reminders, scheduled data imports, or automatic maintenance—without running a server just to wait for the clock.

Good for

Nightly data syncs
Reminder and notification jobs
Scheduled agent workflows

Implementation notes

Keep handlers idempotent so retries are safe.
Use a small function per schedule.
Record run status and duration for debugging.

Implementing it

With a coding agent

Ask your agent to schedule recurring work

Agent setup (mock link)

Copy this prompt, fill in the bracketed details, and paste it into your coding agent. It describes the goal, the schedule, and the guardrails.

Fill in:TASK TO AUTOMATEAPP OR PRODUCTSCHEDULE IN PLAIN LANGUAGETIME ZONESIDE EFFECTS TO PROTECT AGAINSTRETRY AND ALERT BEHAVIORIMPORTANT SCHEDULE, RETRY, AND FAILURE CASES

Good foundation · 72/100

Traditional SDK / API

Use it from a function

TypeScript

export const config = { schedule: "0 9 * * 1-5" }

export async function run() {
  await ultrahost.functions.invoke("send-digest")
}

Key takeaway

Cron gives your application a schedule so important tasks happen without anyone pressing a button.

Next primitive

LLM Plane