Cron scheduling

Schedule tasks to run automatically with delivery to any platform

Hermes has a built-in cron scheduler that runs agent tasks on a schedule and delivers results to any connected platform. Use it for daily reports, nightly backups, weekly summaries, or any recurring workflow.

How it works

Each scheduled job stores a prompt, a schedule expression, and optional delivery settings. The scheduler runs as a background process (started with hermes cron start) and fires the agent with the stored prompt at the scheduled time. Results are saved to ~/.hermes/cron/output/ and optionally delivered to a platform.

The hermes cron subcommand

Manage the scheduler from the command line:

hermes cron start    # Start the scheduler daemon
hermes cron stop     # Stop the scheduler
hermes cron status   # Show scheduler status and next run times
hermes cron list     # List all scheduled jobs

The /cron slash command

Inside a chat session, use /cron to manage jobs interactively:

Subcommand	Description
/cron or /cron list	List all scheduled jobs with status
/cron add <schedule> <prompt>	Create a new job
/cron edit <id>	Edit a job’s prompt or schedule
/cron pause <id>	Pause a job without deleting it
/cron resume <id>	Resume a paused job
/cron run <id>	Trigger a job immediately
/cron remove <id>	Delete a job permanently

You can also describe what you want in natural language and the agent will create the job for you:

Schedule a daily summary of my inbox every morning at 8am

Schedule formats

Natural language

# One-shot jobs
30m                  → run once in 30 minutes
2h                   → run once in 2 hours
2026-03-01T09:00     → run once at a specific date/time

# Recurring intervals
every 30m            → every 30 minutes
every 2h             → every 2 hours
every 1d             → every day

Platform delivery

Jobs created from a messaging platform (Telegram, Discord, etc.) automatically deliver results back to the same chat. You can also specify delivery explicitly:

Create a cron job that runs every morning at 7am, generates a weather briefing, and sends it to my Telegram

Delivery uses the send_message tool and routes to the platform where you created the job, or to any configured platform you specify.

Creating your first cron job

1. Start the scheduler

   If it isn’t already running, start the cron daemon:

   hermes cron start
   
2. Create a job

   Use the /cron slash command or ask the agent naturally. For example, to get a daily news summary:

   /cron add "0 8 * * *" "Search for today's top AI news stories and summarize them in 5 bullet points"
   

   Or in natural language:

   Schedule a daily AI news summary at 8am
   
3. Verify the job

   Run /cron list to confirm the job was created and see its next scheduled run time.

4. Test it now

   Trigger the job immediately to verify it works:

   /cron run <job-id>
   

Example scheduled jobs

# Daily standup prep at 8:45 AM on weekdays
schedule: "45 8 * * 1-5"
prompt: |
  Review my git log for the last 24 hours and draft a standup update:
  what I did yesterday, what I'm doing today, any blockers.

# Nightly project backup at 11 PM
schedule: "0 23 * * *"
prompt: |
  Run a backup of ~/projects to ~/backups/$(date +%Y-%m-%d).tar.gz
  and confirm it completed successfully.

# Weekly dependency audit every Sunday at 6 AM
schedule: "0 6 * * 0"
prompt: |
  Check all package.json files in ~/projects for outdated dependencies
  and generate a report of what needs updating.

Job output

Job output is saved to ~/.hermes/cron/output/<job-id>/<timestamp>.md. You can read past runs by asking the agent:

Show me the output from last night's backup job

Cron prompts are scanned for injection patterns before execution. Prompts containing suspicious patterns (credential exfiltration, destructive commands targeting root paths) are blocked.