Cron Jobs

Schedule tasks to run automatically with natural language or cron expressions. Hermes exposes cron management through a single cronjob tool with action-style operations.

Cron-run sessions cannot recursively create more cron jobs. Hermes disables cron management tools inside cron executions to prevent runaway scheduling loops.

What Cron Can Do

Cron jobs can:

Schedule one-shot or recurring tasks
Pause, resume, edit, trigger, and remove jobs
Attach zero, one, or multiple skills to a job
Deliver results back to the origin chat, local files, or configured platform targets
Run in fresh agent sessions with the normal static tool list
Run in no-agent mode — a script on a schedule, its stdout delivered verbatim, zero LLM involvement

Creating Scheduled Tasks

In chat with `/cron`

/cron add 30m "Remind me to check the build"

/cron add "every 2h" "Check server status"

/cron add "every 1h" "Summarize new feed items" --skill blogwatcher

/cron add "every 1h" "Use both skills and combine the result" --skill blogwatcher --skill maps

From the standalone CLI

hermes cron create "every 2h" "Check server status"

hermes cron create "every 1h" "Summarize new feed items" --skill blogwatcher

hermes cron create "every 1h" "Use both skills and combine the result" \
  --skill blogwatcher \
  --skill maps \
  --name "Skill combo"

Through natural conversation

Ask Hermes normally:

Every morning at 9am, check Hacker News for AI news and send me a summary on Telegram.

Skill-backed Cron Jobs

A cron job can load one or more skills before it runs the prompt.

Single skill

cronjob(
  action="create",
  skill="blogwatcher",
  prompt="Check the configured feeds and summarize anything new.",
  schedule="0 9 * * *",
  name="Morning feeds",
)

Multiple skills

Skills are loaded in order. The prompt becomes the task instruction layered on top of those skills.

cronjob(
  action="create",
  skills=["blogwatcher", "maps"],
  prompt="Look for new local events and interesting nearby places, then combine them into one short brief.",
  schedule="every 6h",
  name="Local brief",
)

Lifecycle Actions

Chat

/cron list
/cron pause <job_id>
/cron resume <job_id>
/cron run <job_id>
/cron remove <job_id>

Standalone CLI

hermes cron list
hermes cron pause <job_id>
hermes cron resume <job_id>
hermes cron run <job_id>
hermes cron remove <job_id>
hermes cron status
hermes cron tick

What they do:

pause — keep the job but stop scheduling it
resume — re-enable the job and compute the next future run
run — trigger the job on the next scheduler tick
remove — delete it entirely

How It Works

Cron execution is handled by the gateway daemon. The gateway ticks the scheduler every 60 seconds, running any due jobs in isolated agent sessions.

hermes gateway install     # Install as a user service
sudo hermes gateway install --system   # Linux: boot-time system service for servers
hermes gateway             # Or run in foreground
hermes cron list
hermes cron status

Delivery Options

When scheduling jobs, you specify where the output goes:

Option	Description	Example
`"origin"`	Back to where the job was created	Default on messaging platforms
`"local"`	Save to local files only (`~/.hermes/cron/output/`)	Default on CLI
`"telegram"`	Telegram home channel	Uses `TELEGRAM_HOME_CHANNEL`
`"discord"`	Discord home channel	Uses `DISCORD_HOME_CHANNEL`
`"slack"`	Slack home channel
`"email"`	Email
`"all"`	Fan out to every connected home channel	Resolved at fire time

The agent’s final response is automatically delivered. You do not need to call send_message in the cron prompt.

Silent Suppression

If the agent’s final response starts with [SILENT], delivery is suppressed entirely:

Check if nginx is running. If everything is healthy, respond with only [SILENT].
Otherwise, report the issue.

No-Agent Mode (Script-Only Jobs)

For recurring jobs that don’t need LLM reasoning — classic watchdogs, disk/memory alerts, heartbeats, CI pings:

hermes cron create "every 5m" \
  --no-agent \
  --script memory-watchdog.sh \
  --deliver telegram \
  --name "memory-watchdog"

Semantics:

Script stdout (trimmed) → delivered verbatim as the message
Empty stdout → silent tick, no delivery
Non-zero exit or timeout → an error alert is delivered
No tokens, no model, no provider fallback

Schedule Formats

Relative delays (one-shot)

30m → Run once in 30 minutes
2h  → Run once in 2 hours
1d  → Run once in 1 day

Cron expressions

0 9 * * *    → Every day at 9:00 AM
*/30 * * * * → Every 30 minutes
0 */6 * * *  → Every 6 hours

Natural language

every 2 hours
every day at 9am
every Monday at 8am

Configuration

# In ~/.hermes/config.yaml
cron:
  wrap_response: false          # Deliver raw agent output without wrapper
  script_timeout_seconds: 300   # Pre-run script timeout (default: 120s)