Tutorial 21: Scheduled Tasks (Cron)

This is part of the Hermes Agent official tutorial series. View all tutorials

Imagine setting an alarm clock for your AI assistant. You tell it once, “wake me up every morning at 9 and check the news,” and it just does it—no reminders needed. That’s exactly what Hermes’s Scheduled Tasks (Cron) does for you.

What Can You Do With Cron?

Think of cron as your personal robot assistant that works on a timer. It can:

• Run a task once or repeat it regularly (like every 2 hours)
• Pause, resume, edit, or cancel tasks anytime
• Add special “skills” to a task (like extra tools for the robot)
• Send results back to your chat, save them to files, or push them to other platforms
• Run simple scripts without any AI involvement (pure automation)

The best part? You can control everything by just talking to Hermes in plain English—no complicated commands needed.

Step 1: Create Your First Scheduled Task

The easiest way is right in your chat window. Just type:

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

This schedules a reminder in 30 minutes. You can also use natural language:

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

That runs every 2 hours. Want to add skills? Just attach them:

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

Step 2: Use the Standalone CLI

Prefer the command line? Same thing, just without the slash:

hermes cron create "every 2h" "Check server status"
hermes cron create "every 1h" "Summarize new feed items" --skill blogwatcher

You can even combine multiple skills:

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

Step 3: Just Ask in Conversation

You don’t even need commands. Just tell Hermes:

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

Hermes will understand and set it up for you.

Important Things to Know

Which model runs your task? There’s a priority order:

1. If you specifically set a model for that job, it uses that
2. Otherwise, it uses the cron default (set in config)
3. If neither is set, it uses your global default—but Hermes “snapshots” this at creation time. If you later change your global model, the job fails safely (skips the run) rather than silently using a different model. This prevents surprises like suddenly paying for a premium model.

No recursive cron jobs: A scheduled task can’t create another scheduled task. This prevents infinite loops of tasks creating tasks.

No-agent mode: You can run pure scripts on a schedule with zero AI involvement—just the script’s output delivered directly.

Summary

Cron scheduling in Hermes is like having a reliable assistant that never forgets. You can set it up through chat, CLI, or plain conversation. It handles everything from simple reminders to complex multi-skill workflows, with safety guards to prevent unexpected behavior.

Next up: We’ll explore how to monitor and manage your running cron jobs—checking logs, troubleshooting, and fine-tuning your automation fleet.