Do cron tasks require heartbeats? | Friends of the Crustacean 🦞🤝 | Page 1

fair imp Mar 14, 2026, 5:47 PM

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I have cron tasks created that didn't work. My heartbeat setting is disabled. Is that the cause?

past pulsarBOT Mar 14, 2026, 5:47 PM

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inland lionBOT Mar 14, 2026, 5:51 PM

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No — cron jobs do not require heartbeats.

Heartbeat = “poke the main session every N minutes and let the agent decide what to do”
Cron = “run this specific job on a schedule”

So disabling heartbeat won’t stop cron from firing.

If your cron jobs didn’t run, the usual causes are:

Gateway wasn’t running continuously (cron runs inside the Gateway process; if the gateway is down/asleep at the scheduled time, it won’t run)
Cron is disabled (cron.enabled: false) or env var OPENCLAW_SKIP_CRON is set
Timezone mismatch (job --tz vs host timezone)

Debug commands (most useful):

openclaw --version

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openclaw gateway status
openclaw cron run <jobId> --force
openclaw cron runs --id <jobId> --limit 50
openclaw logs --follow

Docs:

If you paste your openclaw --version + the output of openclaw cron runs --id <jobId> --limit 50, I can usually tell immediately what happened.

fair imp Mar 14, 2026, 7:16 PM

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HOw to show the list of cron tasks? I don't know the jobIds

inland lionBOT Mar 14, 2026, 7:20 PM

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Run this on the Gateway host (or in remote mode pointing at it):

openclaw cron list

Helpful variants:

openclaw cron list --all     # include disabled jobs too
openclaw cron list --json    # easier to copy/paste here
openclaw cron status         # shows whether the scheduler is running

The jobId is what openclaw cron list prints for each entry.

One nuance since you mentioned heartbeats: if a job is --session main and its wake mode is effectively “next heartbeat”, then disabling heartbeats can indeed prevent it from running. If you paste openclaw cron list --json (and openclaw --version), I can tell you which kind you have.

fair imp Mar 14, 2026, 7:42 PM

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openclaw cron list --json
{
"jobs": [
{
"id": "b54baf8a-6033-4dcd-980e-56f87c288ff1",
"agentId": "reminders",
"sessionKey": "agent:reminders:telegram:group:-5219108434",
"name": "Amazon return reminder (2d)",
"enabled": true,
"deleteAfterRun": true,
"createdAtMs": 1772522355012,
"updatedAtMs": 1772522355012,
"schedule": {
"kind": "at",
"at": "2026-03-15T14:00:00.000Z"
},
"sessionTarget": "main",
"wakeMode": "now",
"payload": {
"kind": "systemEvent",
"text": "Reminder: Your Amazon return is due Mar 17, 2026 (in 2 days). Return all listed items before the deadline."
},
"state": {
"nextRunAtMs": 1773583200000
}
},
{
"id": "e4ff3c0c-bb40-4c00-b980-abda31788607",
"agentId": "reminders",
"sessionKey": "agent:reminders:telegram:group:-5219108434",
"name": "Amazon return reminder (1d)",
"enabled": true,
"deleteAfterRun": true,
"createdAtMs": 1772522355019,
"updatedAtMs": 1772522355019,
"schedule": {
"kind": "at",
"at": "2026-03-16T14:00:00.000Z"
},
"sessionTarget": "main",
"wakeMode": "now",
"payload": {
"kind": "systemEvent",
"text": "Reminder: Your Amazon return is due tomorrow (Mar 17, 2026). Final day to prepare and drop off with the QR code at Whole Foods."
},
"state": {
"nextRunAtMs": 1773669600000
}
},
...

openclaw --version
2026.3.2

inland lionBOT Mar 14, 2026, 7:45 PM

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Those jobs actually look fine — they just haven’t fired yet.

Example:

"at": "2026-03-15T14:00:00.000Z" → next run is Mar 15, 14:00 UTC
Today (from your message timestamp) is Mar 14, so nothing should have happened yet.

A couple important details based on your JSON:

These are main-session cron jobs:

"sessionTarget": "main" + "payload.kind": "systemEvent"

Main-session cron jobs run via the heartbeat runner (they enqueue a system event and then “wake” a heartbeat run).
Because yours are "wakeMode": "now", they should still run at the scheduled time even if you don’t have periodic heartbeats running all day — but they do still depend on that heartbeat mechanism existing.

Timezone gotcha:

The --at timestamps are stored as ISO with Z (UTC).

#Do cron tasks require heartbeats?