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Cron Channel

The Cron channel triggers Agent execution on a schedule without external messages.

Overview

Not a traditional "chat" channel — it's an event injection mechanism that sends predefined messages to the Agent on schedule, triggering automated workflows.

Configuration

channels:
  cron:
    enabled: true

Capabilities

Capability Supported
Edit messages ❌
Reactions ❌
File send ❌
Realtime ❌
Group chat ❌

Creating Scheduled Jobs

Via CLI

echo-agent cron list
echo-agent cron authorize <job-id>   # service must be stopped
echo-agent cron revoke <job-id>      # service must be stopped

Via Agent Conversation

The Agent can create jobs using the cronjob tool:

"Send me a weather report every morning at 9am"

It can also authorize or revoke an existing job:

"Authorize scheduled job 148fb4a4b9"

Via Dashboard

The Dashboard Cron page provides visual job management.

Authorization

New cron jobs start unauthorized. The job still fires on schedule, but its privileged work (writing files, running commands) is denied. This is security by design:

  • It stops the Agent from having scheduled jobs perform high-risk operations with nobody watching
  • Authorization is issued per job, via three paths: say "authorize scheduled job <id>" in chat, tick the box on the Dashboard cron page, or stop the service and run echo-agent cron authorize <id>
  • A grant is bound to the job's content: editing the instruction, schedule or delivery target invalidates it and re-authorization is required (renaming and pause/resume do not)

See the scheduled jobs guide for details.

Output Routing

The cron channel has no send capability of its own. The delivery target is recorded per job, not globally — there is no gateway.deliveryRoutes routing table in the configuration.

Two fields on the job payload decide where output goes:

Field Description
deliver_channel Target channel name, e.g. telegram
deliver_chat_id Target chat id

When either is empty it falls back to the job's own channel / chat_id. Set them when creating the job through the cronjob tool or the Dashboard.