Cron Job Generator

Use Case

Setting up scheduled tasks requires understanding cron syntax and writing reliable scripts. Cowork can help generate properly formatted cron jobs with accompanying scripts.

Example Prompt

I need to set up several scheduled tasks on my Mac:

1. Daily at 2 AM: Backup ~/Documents to external drive
2. Every Monday 9 AM: Generate weekly report from ~/Data/logs/
3. Every 6 hours: Sync local folder with a remote server
4. First of month: Archive old files (>90 days) from ~/Downloads

Please:
- Generate the cron entries
- Create the shell scripts for each task
- Include error logging
- Save everything to ~/Scripts/scheduled/

What Cowork Does

1. Schedule Analysis: Converts requirements to cron expressions
2. Script Generation: Creates shell scripts for each task
3. Error Handling: Adds logging and error notifications
4. Documentation: Generates setup instructions
5. File Creation: Saves scripts and crontab entries

Sample Output

# ~/Scripts/scheduled/crontab_entries.txt

# Daily backup at 2 AM
0 2 * * * /Users/you/Scripts/scheduled/daily_backup.sh >> /var/log/backup.log 2>&1

# Weekly report every Monday 9 AM
0 9 * * 1 /Users/you/Scripts/scheduled/weekly_report.sh >> /var/log/reports.log 2>&1

# Sync every 6 hours
0 */6 * * * /Users/you/Scripts/scheduled/sync_remote.sh >> /var/log/sync.log 2>&1

# Monthly archive on 1st at 3 AM
0 3 1 * * /Users/you/Scripts/scheduled/monthly_archive.sh >> /var/log/archive.log 2>&1

#!/bin/bash
# ~/Scripts/scheduled/daily_backup.sh

set -e
LOG_PREFIX="[$(date '+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S')] BACKUP:"
BACKUP_SRC="$HOME/Documents"
BACKUP_DST="/Volumes/ExternalDrive/Backups"
BACKUP_NAME="documents_$(date '+%Y%m%d').tar.gz"

echo "$LOG_PREFIX Starting backup..."

if [ ! -d "$BACKUP_DST" ]; then
    echo "$LOG_PREFIX ERROR: Backup destination not mounted"
    exit 1
fi

tar -czf "$BACKUP_DST/$BACKUP_NAME" -C "$HOME" Documents

# Keep only last 7 backups
cd "$BACKUP_DST"
ls -t documents_*.tar.gz | tail -n +8 | xargs -r rm

echo "$LOG_PREFIX Backup complete: $BACKUP_NAME"

Cron Syntax Reference

┌───────────── minute (0 - 59)
│ ┌───────────── hour (0 - 23)
│ │ ┌───────────── day of month (1 - 31)
│ │ │ ┌───────────── month (1 - 12)
│ │ │ │ ┌───────────── day of week (0 - 6)
│ │ │ │ │
* * * * *

Tips

• Test scripts manually before scheduling
• Use absolute paths in scripts
• Include proper error handling
• Consider using launchd on macOS for more control
• Add email notifications for failures