custom human-readable ID when creating a cron job | Friends of the Crustacean 🦞🤝 | Page 1

paper cradle Apr 13, 2026, 1:15 AM

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Hey! Is there any way to specify a custom human-readable ID when creating a cron job via cron add? I dug through the source and CronJobCreate doesn't include an id field, and the CLI has no --id flag. Currently working around it by writing directly to jobs.json with a readable string ID before startup (confirmed it loads fine). Just wondering if there's a proper supported path or if this is something worth adding as a feature request.

distant templeBOT Apr 13, 2026, 1:15 AM

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tulip totemBOT Apr 13, 2026, 1:15 AM

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distant templeBOT Apr 13, 2026, 1:15 AM

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shut lotusBOT Apr 13, 2026, 1:17 AM

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Short version: not through the supported CLI today.

I checked the current docs/help and runtime behavior:

openclaw cron add --help has no --id
the docs only document --name plus schedule/payload flags, not a custom job ID: https://docs.openclaw.ai/cli/cron and https://docs.openclaw.ai/automation/cron-jobs
the cron service generates the job ID internally with a UUID when creating a job

So your jobs.json workaround makes sense because stored jobs do have an id, and the loader will honor it, but I'd treat direct file edits as an internal/unsupported path, not a stable public interface.

One useful distinction: if you mainly want a readable persistent context key, --session "session:daily-brief" is supported, but that only names the session, not the cron job ID itself.

So yes, I think this is worth a feature request. A reasonable shape would be something like:

openclaw cron add --id daily-brief ...

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with collision validation and maybe slug rules.

If you want, I can help draft the GitHub issue text.

paper cradle Apr 13, 2026, 1:18 AM

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yes.. can you help me witrh the draft

shut lotusBOT Apr 13, 2026, 1:19 AM

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Yep, here's a clean draft you can paste into GitHub:

Title
cron add: support custom job IDs via --id

Body

## Summary

`openclaw cron add` currently auto-generates a UUID for each job and does not provide a supported way to set a custom human-readable job ID.

## Current behavior

- `CronJobCreate` does not expose an `id` field
- `openclaw cron add --help` has no `--id` flag
- the runtime generates a UUID when creating a job

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Cron jobs stored in `~/.openclaw/cron/jobs.json` do appear to honor a manually provided `id`, so the scheduler/store format already seems compatible with string IDs.

## Problem

For users managing multiple cron jobs, UUIDs are hard to work with in:

- `openclaw cron list`
- `openclaw cron edit <id>`
- `openclaw cron run <id>`
- `openclaw cron runs --id <id>`
- config/scripts/docs where jobs are referenced repeatedly

Human-readable IDs would make cron jobs much easier to operate and automate.

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## Proposed behavior

Support an optional custom ID at creation time, for example:

```bash
openclaw cron add --id daily-brief ...

Suggested behavior:

--id is optional
if omitted, keep current UUID behavior
if provided, validate against a safe format (for example slug-like strings)
reject collisions with an explicit error
preserve the existing name field separately from id

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## Example use cases

```bash
openclaw cron add --id daily-brief --name "Daily Brief" ...
openclaw cron edit daily-brief --no-deliver
openclaw cron run daily-brief
openclaw cron runs --id daily-brief

Current workaround

Right now the only workaround seems to be editing ~/.openclaw/cron/jobs.json directly before startup and supplying a readable id there.

That works, but it feels like an internal/unsupported path rather than an intended interface.

#custom human-readable ID when creating a cron job

Current workaround