A specialized linting tool to validate cron schedule syntax and enforce notification standards for AI agents and automation.
Install & Download
1. ClawHub CLI
The fastest way to install a skill directly from the registry.
npx clawhub@latest install cron-guardrails-pack
2. Manual Installation
Copy the skill folder to one of these locations
~/.openclaw/skills/ <project>/skills/ Priority: Workspace > Local > Bundled
3. Prompt Installation
Copy this prompt to OpenClaw to install it automatically.
Help me install cron-guardrails-pack using Clawhub. If Clawhub is not installed, install it first (npm i -g clawhub).
Prefer to download?
Get the raw skill files in a ZIP archive.
What is cron-guardrails-pack?
The cron-guardrails-pack is a dedicated utility designed to maintain the integrity and discipline of scheduled automation. It provides static linting for cron entries, ensuring that schedules strictly follow the standard five-field format while specifically screening for invalid or hallucinated model names that might break AI-driven workflows. This tool is an essential addition for developers using Openclaw Skills who need to ensure their automated tasks are both syntactically correct and operationally sound.
Beyond simple syntax checks, this skill emphasizes operational discipline by flagging messaging jobs that lack the NO_REPLY marker. This helps maintain clean, one-way communication channels for automated broadcasts, preventing notification loops or unmonitored reply chains. By incorporating these guardrails, teams can ensure that every automated heartbeat or notification includes the necessary metadata, such as owner and purpose, within the command comments.
cron-guardrails-pack Use Cases
- Validating crontab files before deployment to production environments to prevent scheduling errors.
- Auditing notification scripts to ensure automated messages include the mandatory NO_REPLY discipline.
- Screening for deprecated or incorrect AI model names (e.g., haiku-4-6) within automation pipelines.
- Improving team communication by enforcing the inclusion of owner and purpose comments in cron commands.
- Integrating automated linting into CI/CD pipelines to maintain cron job health.
How cron-guardrails-pack Works
- The user provides a path to a crontab file or pipes content via stdin to the cron-lint.py script within the environment.
- The script parses each line of the input, verifying that the schedule contains exactly five fields.
- The tool matches command content against a list of known bad model names to prevent execution failures in AI-integrated tasks.
- It scans for announcement or notification keywords and checks for the presence of the NO_REPLY tag in the payload or message body.
- The script returns an exit code of 0 if all checks pass, 1 if linting issues are found, or 2 for usage errors.
cron-guardrails-pack Setup
To start using this skill from the Openclaw Skills library, ensure you have Python 3 installed. You can invoke the linting script directly from your terminal or within your agent workflow:
# Install the skill from ClawHub and navigate to the directory
# Lint a specific cron file
python3 scripts/cron-lint.py /path/to/crontab.txt
# Pipe content directly from another process
cat /path/to/crontab.txt | python3 scripts/cron-lint.py -
cron-guardrails-pack Data Schema & Taxonomy
The cron-guardrails-pack processes standard text-based cron files and utilizes standard exit codes for easy integration with other tools.
| Component | Details |
|---|---|
| Input Format | Plain text cron entries (file or stdin) |
| Schedule Field Check | Strictly 5 fields (minute, hour, day, month, day-of-week) |
| Notification Tag | Looks for NO_REPLY in command string |
| Exit Code 0 | Success: No issues found |
| Exit Code 1 | Failure: Linting violations or missing discipline markers |
| Exit Code 2 | Error: Usage or read error |
cron-guardrails-pack Advanced Features
- CI/CD Readiness: Use standard exit codes to break builds when invalid cron entries are detected.
- Stdin Support: Enables real-time validation of dynamically generated cron schedules.
- Model Name Guardrails: Prevents common AI configuration errors by blacklisting known bad model identifiers.
- Notification Discipline: Enforces a one-way communication standard for automated alerts, a key best practice for Openclaw Skills users.
- Comment Auditing: Encourages best practices by checking for owner and purpose metadata in commands.
SKILL.md
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