# Tool Description: CronCreate ## Metadata - Request location: `tools[]` - Tool name: `CronCreate` - Input schema properties: `cron`, `prompt`, `recurring`, `durable` ## Description Schedule a prompt to be enqueued at a future time. Use for both recurring schedules and one-shot reminders. Uses standard 5-field cron in the user's local timezone: minute hour day-of-month month day-of-week. "0 9 * * *" means 9am local — no timezone conversion needed. ## One-shot tasks (recurring: false) For "remind me at X" or "at , do Y" requests — fire once then auto-delete. Pin minute/hour/day-of-month/month to specific values: "remind me at 2:30pm today to check the deploy" → cron: "30 14 *", recurring: false "tomorrow morning, run the smoke test" → cron: "57 8 *", recurring: false ## Recurring jobs (recurring: true, the default) For "every N minutes" / "every hour" / "weekdays at 9am" requests: "*/5 * * * *" (every 5 min), "0 * * * *" (hourly), "0 9 * * 1-5" (weekdays at 9am local) ## Avoid the :00 and :30 minute marks when the task allows it Every user who asks for "9am" gets `0 9`, and every user who asks for "hourly" gets `0 *` — which means requests from across the planet land on the API at the same instant. When the user's request is approximate, pick a minute that is NOT 0 or 30: "every morning around 9" → "57 8 * * *" or "3 9 * * *" (not "0 9 * * *") "hourly" → "7 * * * *" (not "0 * * * *") "in an hour or so, remind me to..." → pick whatever minute you land on, don't round Only use minute 0 or 30 when the user names that exact time and clearly means it ("at 9:00 sharp", "at half past", coordinating with a meeting). When in doubt, nudge a few minutes early or late — the user will not notice, and the fleet will. ## Session-only Jobs live only in this Claude session — nothing is written to disk, and the job is gone when Claude exits. ## Not for live watching CronCreate re-runs a prompt at fixed wall-clock intervals. To watch a log file, process, or command output and be notified the moment something changes, use the Monitor tool instead — Monitor streams events as they happen; cron polls on a schedule. ## Runtime behavior Jobs only fire while the REPL is idle (not mid-query). The scheduler adds a small deterministic jitter on top of whatever you pick: recurring tasks fire up to 10% of their period late (max 15 min); one-shot tasks landing on :00 or :30 fire up to 90 s early. Picking an off-minute is still the bigger lever. Recurring tasks auto-expire after 7 days — they fire one final time, then are deleted. This bounds session lifetime. Tell the user about the 7-day limit when scheduling recurring jobs. Returns a job ID you can pass to CronDelete. ## Input Schema ```json { "$schema": "https://json-schema.org/draft/2020-12/schema", "type": "object", "properties": { "cron": { "description": "Standard 5-field cron expression in local time: \"M H DoM Mon DoW\" (e.g. \"*/5 * * * *\" = every 5 minutes, \"30 14 28 2 *\" = Feb 28 at 2:30pm local once).", "type": "string" }, "prompt": { "description": "The prompt to enqueue at each fire time.", "type": "string" }, "recurring": { "description": "true (default) = fire on every cron match until deleted or auto-expired after 7 days. false = fire once at the next match, then auto-delete. Use false for \"remind me at X\" one-shot requests with pinned minute/hour/dom/month.", "type": "boolean" }, "durable": { "description": "true = persist to .claude/scheduled_tasks.json and survive restarts. false (default) = in-memory only, dies when this Claude session ends. Use true only when the user asks the task to survive across sessions.", "type": "boolean" } }, "required": [ "cron", "prompt" ], "additionalProperties": false } ``` ## Token Impact - Complete definition estimated tokens: **1,519** - Measurement: captured tool object serialized independently as JSON text against the common baseline - Additivity: independent, non-additive estimate