Cron Mastery

If you've ever had a reminder fail because your agent was between heartbeats, this is the fix. It draws a hard line between casual polling (heartbeat) and precise scheduling (cron), with concrete patterns for "remind me in X minutes" using one-shot jobs. The janitor pattern alone is worth it: a recurring job that auto-deletes finished reminders so you don't end up with 50 ghost entries. Includes the full JSON payloads and a critical rule about wake modes that isn't obvious from the docs. Best for anyone running scheduled tasks or reminders and tired of debugging timing drift.

skills.sh installs: 260
GitHub stars: 674
last updated: Aug 21, 2026

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Install

$ npx -y skills add sundial-org/awesome-openclaw-skills --skill cron-mastery --agent claude-code

Installs into .claude/skills of the current project.

Files

Cron Mastery

Rule #1: Heartbeats drift. Cron is precise.

This skill provides the definitive guide for managing time in OpenClaw. It solves the "I missed my reminder" problem by enforcing a strict separation between casual checks (heartbeat) and hard schedules (cron).

The Core Principle

System	Behavior	Best For	Risk
Heartbeat	"I'll check in when I can" (e.g., every 30-60m)	Email checks, casual news summaries, low-priority polling.	Drift: A "remind me in 10m" task will fail if the heartbeat is 30m.
Cron	"I will run at exactly X time"	Reminders ("in 5 mins"), daily reports, system maintenance.	Clutter: Creates one-off jobs that need cleanup.

1. Setting Reliable Reminders

Never use act:wait or internal loops for long delays (>1 min). Use cron:add with a one-shot at schedule.

Standard Reminder Pattern (JSON)

Use this payload structure for "remind me in X minutes" tasks:

{
  "name": "Remind: Drink Water",
  "schedule": {
    "kind": "at",
    "atMs": <CURRENT_MS + DELAY_MS>
  },
  "payload": {
    "kind": "agentTurn",

SKILL.md on GitHub

Details

Repository: github.com/sundial-org/awesome-openclaw-skills
Category: Automation & Workflows
First seen: Jun 3, 2026

Cron Mastery

Install

Files

Cron Mastery

The Core Principle

1. Setting Reliable Reminders

Standard Reminder Pattern (JSON)

Details

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