Cron pipelines run AI agents on a schedule — no webhook required, no manual trigger. Pylon evaluates the cron expression, and when the time comes, it clones your repo, runs the agent, and posts results to your configured channel.
Weekly Codebase Audit
Schedule an automated security and code-quality audit every Monday at 9 AM. The agent clones your repo, analyzes the codebase, and posts a summary report to Telegram or Slack.
Create the pipeline
pylon construct weekly-audit --from cron-audit
Pylon prompts you for two values:
- Repo URL — the repository the agent will audit (e.g.
git@github.com:acme/app.git)
- Default branch — the branch to check out (defaults to
main)
Enter these values and Pylon writes the config to ~/.pylon/pylons/weekly-audit/pylon.yaml.Review the generated config
name: "weekly-audit"
created: "2025-01-01T00:00:00Z"
trigger:
type: cron
cron: "0 9 * * 1" # Every Monday at 9am
channel:
message: "Weekly codebase audit"
approval: false
workspace:
type: git-clone
repo: "git@github.com:acme/app.git"
ref: main
agent:
prompt: |
Audit this codebase for security vulnerabilities, outdated
dependencies, and code quality issues. Provide a summary report.
timeout: 30m
The 30-minute timeout gives the agent enough time to work through a large codebase. Increase it for very large repositories.Start the daemon
Pylon registers the cron schedule and waits. The first run fires at 9 AM on the next Monday. Receive the audit report
At 9 AM every Monday, Pylon clones the repository, runs the agent, and posts a summary report to your configured channel covering security vulnerabilities, outdated dependencies, and code quality issues.
There is no approval flow for cron triggers. The approval field has no effect when trigger.type is cron — the agent always runs automatically on schedule.
Cron Expression Reference
The trigger.cron field uses standard five-field cron syntax:
+----- minute (0-59)
| +--- hour (0-23)
| | +- day of month (1-31)
| | | +- month (1-12)
| | | | +- day of week (0-7, Sunday = 0 or 7)
| | | | |
* * * * *
Common expressions
| Expression | Schedule |
|---|
0 0 * * * | Daily at midnight |
0 */6 * * * | Every 6 hours |
0 9 * * 1-5 | Weekdays at 9:00 AM |
0 9 * * 1 | Every Monday at 9:00 AM |
0 0 1 * * | First day of every month at midnight |
30 8 * * 5 | Every Friday at 8:30 AM |
0 12 * * * | Daily at noon |
0 */4 * * * | Every 4 hours |
Timezone Support
By default, cron expressions are evaluated in the system’s local timezone. Use the trigger.timezone field to specify a different timezone with an IANA timezone identifier:
trigger:
type: cron
cron: "0 9 * * 1"
timezone: "America/New_York"
US timezones
Europe timezones
Asia/Pacific timezones
UTC
timezone: "America/New_York" # Eastern
timezone: "America/Chicago" # Central
timezone: "America/Denver" # Mountain
timezone: "America/Los_Angeles" # Pacific
timezone: "Europe/London" # GMT/BST
timezone: "Europe/Berlin" # CET/CEST
timezone: "Europe/Paris" # CET/CEST
timezone: "Europe/Istanbul" # TRT
timezone: "Asia/Tokyo" # JST
timezone: "Asia/Shanghai" # CST
timezone: "Asia/Kolkata" # IST
timezone: "Australia/Sydney" # AEST/AEDT
More Schedule Examples
Daily security scan at midnight UTC
name: "nightly-scan"
trigger:
type: cron
cron: "0 0 * * *"
timezone: "UTC"
workspace:
type: git-clone
repo: "git@github.com:acme/app.git"
ref: main
agent:
prompt: |
Scan this codebase for security vulnerabilities. Focus on
dependency CVEs, hardcoded secrets, and injection risks.
timeout: 20m
Every 6 hours — dependency check
name: "dep-check"
trigger:
type: cron
cron: "0 */6 * * *"
workspace:
type: git-clone
repo: "git@github.com:acme/app.git"
ref: main
agent:
prompt: |
Check all dependencies for known vulnerabilities and available
updates. Report any critical or high severity issues.
timeout: 15m
Weekdays at 9 AM — standup summary
name: "standup-summary"
trigger:
type: cron
cron: "0 9 * * 1-5"
timezone: "America/New_York"
workspace:
type: git-clone
repo: "git@github.com:acme/app.git"
ref: main
agent:
prompt: |
Summarize the git activity from the last 24 hours. List new
commits, open PRs, and any failing CI checks.
timeout: 10m
First of every month — full audit
name: "monthly-audit"
trigger:
type: cron
cron: "0 0 1 * *"
timezone: "UTC"
workspace:
type: git-clone
repo: "git@github.com:acme/app.git"
ref: main
agent:
prompt: |
Perform a comprehensive audit of this codebase. Cover security
vulnerabilities, code quality, test coverage gaps, outdated
dependencies, and architecture concerns. Provide a detailed report.
timeout: 60m