Cron

openclaw cron

Manage cron jobs for the Gateway scheduler.

Tip

Run openclaw cron --help for the full command surface. See Cron jobs for the conceptual guide.

Sessions

--session accepts main, isolated, current, or session:<id>.

Session keys

• main binds to the agent’s main session.
• isolated creates a fresh transcript and session id for each run.
• current binds to the active session at creation time.
• `session:

` pins to an explicit persistent session key.

Isolated session semantics

Isolated runs reset ambient conversation context. Channel and group routing, send/queue policy, elevation, origin, and ACP runtime binding are reset for the new run. Safe preferences and explicit user-selected model or auth overrides can carry across runs.

Delivery

openclaw cron list and openclaw cron show <job-id> preview the resolved delivery route. For channel: "last", the preview shows whether the route resolved from the main or current session, or will fail closed.

Provider-prefixed targets can disambiguate unresolved announce channels. For example, to: "telegram:123" selects Telegram when delivery.channel is omitted or last. Only prefixes advertised by the loaded plugin are provider selectors. If delivery.channel is explicit, the prefix must match that channel; channel: "whatsapp" with to: "telegram:123" is rejected. Service prefixes such as imessage: and sms: remain channel-owned target syntax.

Note

Isolated cron add jobs default to --announce delivery. Use --no-deliver to keep output internal. --deliver remains as a deprecated alias for --announce.

Delivery ownership

Isolated cron chat delivery is shared between the agent and the runner:

• The agent can send directly using the message tool when a chat route is available.
• announce fallback-delivers the final reply only when the agent did not send directly to the resolved target.
• webhook posts the finished payload to a URL.
• none disables runner fallback delivery.

--announce is runner fallback delivery for the final reply. --no-deliver disables that fallback but does not remove the agent’s message tool when a chat route is available.

Reminders created from an active chat preserve the live chat delivery target for fallback announce delivery. Internal session keys may be lowercase; do not use them as a source of truth for case-sensitive provider IDs such as Matrix room IDs.

Failure delivery

Failure notifications resolve in this order:

1. delivery.failureDestination on the job.
2. Global cron.failureDestination.
3. The job’s primary announce target (when no explicit failure destination is set).

Note

Main-session jobs may only use delivery.failureDestination when primary delivery mode is webhook. Isolated jobs accept it in all modes.

Note: isolated cron runs treat run-level agent failures as job errors even when no reply payload is produced, so model/provider failures still increment error counters and trigger failure notifications.

If an isolated run times out before the first model request, openclaw cron show and openclaw cron runs include a phase-specific error such as setup timed out before runner start or stalled before first model call (last phase: context-engine). For CLI-backed providers, the pre-model watchdog stays active until the external CLI turn starts, so session lookup, hook, auth, prompt, and CLI setup stalls are reported as pre-model cron failures.

Scheduling

One-shot jobs

--at <datetime> schedules a one-shot run. Offset-less datetimes are treated as UTC unless you also pass --tz <iana>, which interprets the wall-clock time in the given timezone.

Note

One-shot jobs delete after success by default. Use --keep-after-run to preserve them.

Recurring jobs

Recurring jobs use exponential retry backoff after consecutive errors: 30s, 1m, 5m, 15m, 60m. The schedule returns to normal after the next successful run.

Skipped runs are tracked separately from execution errors. They do not affect retry backoff, but openclaw cron edit <job-id> --failure-alert-include-skipped can opt failure alerts into repeated skipped-run notifications.

For isolated jobs that target a local configured model provider, cron runs a lightweight provider preflight before starting the agent turn. Loopback, private-network, and .local api: "ollama" providers are probed at /api/tags; local OpenAI-compatible providers such as vLLM, SGLang, and LM Studio are probed at /models. If the endpoint is unreachable, the run is recorded as skipped and retried on a later schedule; matching dead endpoints are cached for 5 minutes to avoid many jobs hammering the same local server.

Note: cron job definitions live in jobs.json, while pending runtime state lives in jobs-state.json. If jobs.json is edited externally, the Gateway reloads changed schedules and clears stale pending slots; formatting-only rewrites do not clear the pending slot.

Manual runs

openclaw cron run <job-id> force-runs by default and returns as soon as the manual run is queued. Successful responses include { ok: true, enqueued: true, runId }. Use the returned runId to inspect the later result:

openclaw cron run <job-id>
openclaw cron runs --id <job-id> --run-id <run-id>

Add --wait when a script should block until that exact queued run records a terminal status:

openclaw cron run <job-id> --wait --wait-timeout 10m --poll-interval 2s

With --wait, the CLI still calls cron.run first, then polls cron.runs for the returned runId. The command exits 0 only when the run finishes with status ok. It exits non-zero when the run finishes with error or skipped, when the Gateway response does not include a runId, or when --wait-timeout expires. --poll-interval must be greater than zero.

Note

Use --due when you want the manual command to run only if the job is currently due. If --due --wait does not enqueue a run, the command returns the normal non-run response instead of polling.

Models

cron add|edit --model <ref> selects an allowed model for the job.

Warning

If the model is not allowed or cannot be resolved, cron fails the run with an explicit validation error instead of falling back to the job’s agent or default model selection.

Cron --model is a job primary, not a chat-session /model override. That means:

• Configured model fallbacks still apply when the selected job model fails.
• Per-job payload fallbacks replaces the configured fallback list when present.
• An empty per-job fallback list (fallbacks: [] in the job payload/API) makes the cron run strict.
• When a job has --model but no fallback list is configured, OpenClaw passes an explicit empty fallback override so the agent primary is not appended as a hidden retry target.

openclaw doctor reports jobs that already have payload.model set, including provider namespace counts and mismatches against agents.defaults.model. Use that check when auth, provider, or billing behavior looks different between live chat and scheduled jobs.

Isolated cron model precedence

Isolated cron resolves the active model in this order:

1. Gmail-hook override.
2. Per-job --model.
3. Stored cron-session model override (when the user selected one).
4. Agent or default model selection.

Fast mode

Isolated cron fast mode follows the resolved live model selection. Model config params.fastMode applies by default, but a stored session fastMode override still wins over config.

Live model switch retries

If an isolated run throws LiveSessionModelSwitchError, cron persists the switched provider and model (and switched auth profile override when present) for the active run before retrying. The outer retry loop is bounded to two switch retries after the initial attempt, then aborts instead of looping forever.

Run output and denials

Stale acknowledgement suppression

Isolated cron turns suppress stale acknowledgement-only replies. If the first result is just an interim status update and no descendant subagent run is responsible for the eventual answer, cron re-prompts once for the real result before delivery.

Silent token suppression

If an isolated cron run returns only the silent token (NO_REPLY or no_reply), cron suppresses both direct outbound delivery and the fallback queued summary path, so nothing is posted back to chat.

Structured denials

Isolated cron runs use structured execution-denial metadata from the embedded run as the authoritative denial signal. They also honor node-host UNAVAILABLE wrappers when the nested structured error message starts with SYSTEM_RUN_DENIED or INVALID_REQUEST.

Cron does not classify final-output prose or approval-looking refusal phrases as denials unless the embedded run also provides structured denial metadata, so ordinary assistant text is not treated as a blocked command.

cron list and run history surface the denial reason instead of reporting a blocked command as ok.

Retention

Retention and pruning are controlled in config:

• cron.sessionRetention (default 24h) prunes completed isolated run sessions.
• cron.runLog.maxBytes and cron.runLog.keepLines prune ~/.openclaw/cron/runs/<jobId>.jsonl.

Migrating older jobs

Note

If you have cron jobs from before the current delivery and store format, run openclaw doctor --fix. Doctor normalizes legacy cron fields (jobId, schedule.cron, top-level delivery fields including legacy threadId, payload provider delivery aliases) and migrates simple notify: true webhook fallback jobs to explicit webhook delivery when cron.webhook is configured.

Common edits

Update delivery settings without changing the message:

openclaw cron edit <job-id> --announce --channel telegram --to "123456789"

Disable delivery for an isolated job:

openclaw cron edit <job-id> --no-deliver

Enable lightweight bootstrap context for an isolated job:

openclaw cron edit <job-id> --light-context

Announce to a specific channel:

openclaw cron edit <job-id> --announce --channel slack --to "channel:C1234567890"

Announce to a Telegram forum topic:

openclaw cron edit <job-id> --announce --channel telegram --to "-1001234567890" --thread-id 42

Create an isolated job with lightweight bootstrap context:

openclaw cron add \
  --name "Lightweight morning brief" \
  --cron "0 7 * * *" \
  --session isolated \
  --message "Summarize overnight updates." \
  --light-context \
  --no-deliver

--light-context applies to isolated agent-turn jobs only. For cron runs, lightweight mode keeps bootstrap context empty instead of injecting the full workspace bootstrap set.

Common admin commands

Manual run and inspection:

openclaw cron list
openclaw cron list --agent ops
openclaw cron get <job-id>
openclaw cron show <job-id>
openclaw cron run <job-id>
openclaw cron run <job-id> --due
openclaw cron run <job-id> --wait --wait-timeout 10m
openclaw cron run <job-id> --wait --wait-timeout 10m --poll-interval 2s
openclaw cron runs --id <job-id> --limit 50
openclaw cron runs --id <job-id> --run-id <run-id>

openclaw cron list shows all matching jobs by default. Pass --agent <id> to show only jobs whose effective normalized agent id matches; jobs without a stored agent id count as the configured default agent.

openclaw cron get <job-id> returns the stored job JSON directly. Use cron show <job-id> when you want the human-readable view with delivery-route preview.

cron list --json and cron show <job-id> --json include a top-level status field on each job, computed from enabled, state.runningAtMs, and state.lastRunStatus. Values: disabled, running, ok, error, skipped, or idle. This mirrors the human-readable status column so external tooling can read job state without re-deriving it.

cron runs entries include delivery diagnostics with the intended cron target, the resolved target, message-tool sends, fallback use, and delivered state.

Agent and session retargeting:

openclaw cron edit <job-id> --agent ops
openclaw cron edit <job-id> --clear-agent
openclaw cron edit <job-id> --session current
openclaw cron edit <job-id> --session "session:daily-brief"

openclaw cron add warns when --agent is omitted on agent-turn jobs and falls back to the default agent (main). Pass --agent <id> at create time to pin a specific agent.

Delivery tweaks:

openclaw cron edit <job-id> --announce --channel slack --to "channel:C1234567890"
openclaw cron edit <job-id> --best-effort-deliver
openclaw cron edit <job-id> --no-best-effort-deliver
openclaw cron edit <job-id> --no-deliver

Related

• CLI reference
• Scheduled tasks