Creating a Cron Job

Creating a Cron Job

Open Settings → Cron and click New job.

Fields

Field	What it is
Name	Human-readable label shown in the panel and run history
Cron expression	5- or 6-field croner-compatible expression. Second field is optional
Timezone	IANA zone (e.g. America/New_York, Europe/London, UTC)
Prompt	The task sent to the agent each time the job fires
Workspace root	Absolute path to the workspace the agent runs in. Required

Validation

Cron expressions and timezones are validated by croner at save time. If either is invalid, croner’s diagnostic message is surfaced verbatim in the form — no re-wrapping, so you can search the croner docs directly.

The workspace root is validated at the RPC boundary:

• Must be an absolute path
• No .. segments allowed (no escape)
• Must point to an existing directory readable by Ptah

Caution

Don’t put secrets in the prompt. Job rows live in ~/.ptah/ptah.db and are also visible in run history. Reference secrets through your environment or settings, not the prompt body.

RPC surface

For automation or A2A scenarios:

Method	Purpose
cron:create	Create a job
cron:update	Update an existing job
cron:delete	Delete a job (cascade-deletes its run history)
cron:toggle	Enable / disable a job without deleting it
cron:runNow	Fire the job immediately, off-schedule
cron:list	List all jobs
cron:get	Fetch a single job
cron:runs	List past runs for a job
cron:nextFire	Compute the next scheduled fire time

Tips

• Start with the cron expression 0 * * * * (top of every hour) and Run now the first time to confirm the job behaves as you expect.
• Toggle a job off rather than deleting it if you’re just pausing — run history stays intact.
• Use small, idempotent prompts. A 200-line prompt that runs every 5 minutes is a recipe for noise.