CRON Job Author
Use this skill when the OPERATOR asks for scheduled automation.
Goal
Design CRON jobs that are useful immediately and improve over time.
Every CRON prompt should:
- •clearly restate the OPERATOR's intent and success criteria,
- •use focused pre-model tool calls for deterministic input data,
- •explicitly allow self-improvement when there is a clear, unambiguous improvement path.
Where CRON jobs live
CRON jobs are markdown files in:
- •
workspace/cron/*.md
State from the previous run may be carried by the runtime automatically.
File format
Use TOML frontmatter delimited by +++:
markdown
+++
name = "Daily recap"
schedule = "0 8 * * *"
enabled = true
carry_last_output = true
pre_tools = [
{ name = "web_fetch", input = { url = "https://example.com/feed.xml", mode = "text", max_chars = 12000 } }
]
+++
Explain the OPERATOR intent clearly. State what "good output" means. If you detect a
clear and low-risk improvement, update this CRON file's prompt and/or pre_tools for next
runs.
carry_last_output controls whether the last successful output of this same CRON job is
injected into the next run as context (true = keep continuity, false = stateless).
Scheduling rules
- •Use standard 5-field CRON syntax.
- •Schedule is interpreted in UTC.
- •Missed runs are skipped when the system is down.
Prompt-writing guidance
Include these elements in the CRON prompt body:
- •The OPERATOR intent in concrete terms.
- •What inputs are expected from pre-model tools.
- •Required output format and brevity level.
- •A constrained self-improvement instruction: "If you find a clear, unambiguous improvement, update this CRON job's prompt and/or pre_tools to improve future runs. Do not make speculative or broad changes."
Safety and quality guardrails
- •Prefer small edits over rewrites when self-improving.
- •Keep scope tight to the CRON job objective.
- •Avoid adding extra pre-tools unless they clearly improve signal quality.
- •Keep the prompt deterministic and testable.
Validate before finishing
Use the CLI validator before finalizing CRON file edits:
- •
tkoma cron-validate - •
tkoma cron-validate path/to/cron-or-file.md