Cron

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    Audit this codebase for security vulnerabilities, outdated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 start

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repository, runs the agent, and posts a summary report to your configured channel covering security vulnerabilities, outdated dependencies, and code quality issues.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

timezone: "UTC"

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

Get Started

Concepts

YAML

Examples

Running

Weekly Codebase Audit

Cron Expression Reference

Common expressions

Timezone Support

More Schedule Examples

Daily security scan at midnight UTC

Every 6 hours — dependency check

Weekdays at 9 AM — standup summary

First of every month — full audit

​Weekly Codebase Audit

​Cron Expression Reference

​Common expressions

​Timezone Support

​More Schedule Examples

​Daily security scan at midnight UTC

​Every 6 hours — dependency check

​Weekdays at 9 AM — standup summary

​First of every month — full audit

Weekly Codebase Audit

Cron Expression Reference

Common expressions

Timezone Support

More Schedule Examples

Daily security scan at midnight UTC

Every 6 hours — dependency check

Weekdays at 9 AM — standup summary

First of every month — full audit