Cron & Scheduled Tasks in Garudust Agent — Autonomous Agents That Run Without You

Most AI agents wait. They sit idle until a human types something, respond, then go back to waiting.

Garudust Agent can be different. With garudust-cron

, you schedule tasks using standard cron syntax — the agent wakes up, runs a full LLM loop with all its tools, and goes back to sleep. No human required.

This post shows you exactly how to configure it, with the correct syntax pulled straight from the source.

How It Works #

garudust-cron

is a crate within the Garudust workspace. When a scheduled trigger fires, it calls agent.run(task)

— the same code path as a user typing a message. The agent has access to all its configured tools: file read/write, terminal, RAG, web search, and anything else you've enabled.

Cron runs as part of garudust-server

. There is no separate daemon.

Three Ways to Set Up Cron Jobs #

1. config.yaml

— Permanent, survives restarts

cron:
  jobs:
    - schedule: "0 0 9 * * 1-5"   # weekdays at 09:00 (server timezone)
      task: "Write a morning briefing and append it to ~/briefing.md"

    - schedule: "0 0 18 * * 5"    # Fridays at 18:00
      task: "Summarise this week's git commits and save to ~/weekly.md"

CronJob

has exactly two fields: schedule

and task

. Nothing else.

schedule

uses 6-field cron syntax (seconds first):

┌───────── second (0–59)
│ ┌─────── minute (0–59)
│ │ ┌───── hour (0–23)
│ │ │ ┌─── day of month (1–31)
│ │ │ │ ┌─ month (1–12)
│ │ │ │ │ ┌ day of week (0–6, Sun=0)
│ │ │ │ │ │
0 0 9 * * 1-5

Timezone follows the server process — set your system timezone before starting garudust-server

if needed.

2. CLI flag or environment variable — One-off / Docker

garudust-server --cron-jobs "0 0 9 * * *=Write morning briefing,0 0 18 * * 5=Weekly summary"

GARUDUST_CRON_JOBS="0 0 9 * * *=Write morning briefing"

These take precedence over config.yaml

when both are set.

3. Runtime via chat — No restart needed

Once the server is running, you (or any admin) can create jobs live by asking the agent:

You:   Create a cron job that runs every day at 7am to check disk usage
       and send me an alert if any partition is above 80%.

Agent: [uses cron_create tool]
       Created cron job 'disk_check' with schedule: 0 0 7 * * *

Note:cron_create

uses6-fieldcron syntax (seconds first):sec min hour dom month dow

Same format asconfig.yaml

.

Format	Where used	Example
6-field	everywhere (config.yaml , --cron-jobs , env var, cron_create )
0 0 9 * * 1-5

Runtime jobs are not persisted— they disappear on server restart. Add them to config.yaml

for permanent schedules.Manage runtime jobs:

You:   List all active cron jobs.
Agent: - [disk_check]  schedule: 0 0 7 * * *  task: Check disk usage...  created: 2025-05-21 07:00 UTC

You:   Delete the disk_check job.
Agent: Cron job 'disk_check' removed.

Memory Maintenance (Bonus) #

CronConfig

has two extra fields specifically for automatic memory housekeeping:

cron:
  jobs:
    - schedule: "0 0 9 * * *"
      task: "Morning briefing"

  memory_consolidation: "0 0 3 * * *"   # daily at 03:00

  memory_expiry: "0 0 4 * * 0"          # weekly on Sunday at 04:00

These run lightweight maintenance tasks — no LLM call required.

Practical Examples #

Morning Briefing

cron:
  jobs:
    - schedule: "0 0 8 * * 1-5"
      task: >
        Write a morning briefing covering: (1) any new files in ~/inbox/,
        (2) a summary of yesterday's ~/logs/app.log errors,
        (3) today's date and day of week.
        Save the result to ~/briefing/$(date +%Y-%m-%d).md.

Log Monitoring

cron:
  jobs:
    - schedule: "0 */15 * * * *"   # every 15 minutes
      task: >
        Check /var/log/app/error.log for entries in the last 15 minutes.
        If there are more than 10 errors, append a summary to ~/alerts/errors.log.

Weekly Git Summary

cron:
  jobs:
    - schedule: "0 0 17 * * 5"   # Fridays at 17:00
      task: >
        Run git log --since="1 week ago" --oneline in ~/project/,
        summarise what changed by area, and save to ~/reports/weekly.md.

Sending Results to Telegram

Cron jobs have no built-in delivery mechanism — the agent writes to files or uses tools. To send to Telegram, write it into the task prompt:

cron:
  jobs:
    - schedule: "0 0 9 * * *"
      task: >
        Write a morning briefing (top 3 priorities for today, weather summary).
        Then send it to Telegram chat ID 123456789 using the send_message tool.

The agent calls send_message

itself. The chat ID must be hardcoded in the task or retrievable from a file the agent can read.

Disabling Cron Tools #

If you want to prevent the agent from creating or deleting jobs at runtime, disable the toolset:

disabled_toolsets: [cron]

Config-file jobs still run — only the cron_create

/ cron_list

/ cron_delete

runtime tools are disabled.

Summary #

config.yaml | --cron-jobs / env var | Runtime (cron_create ) | | |---|---|---|---| | Cron syntax | 6-field | 6-field | 6-field | | Persists across restarts | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | | Requires restart to activate | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | cron_list shows it | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |

Start with config.yaml

for anything you want running reliably. Use runtime jobs for experiments or tasks you only need for the current server session.

source & further reading

dev.to — original article Transformers — The Architecture That Changed AI (Part 1 of 3) How LLM Function Calling Actually Works — From Tokens to Tool Orchestration 7 AI Tools Every SDET Should Learn in 2026 — With Real Testing Use Cases