Cron

Cron is a Unix-based job scheduling tool used to run automated tasks at specified intervals, employed by some developers as a mechanism for triggering periodic Claude Code executions in agent workflows.

Use as an agent scheduling primitive

Cron has been used as a way to schedule Claude Code to run autonomously on a recurring basis. Maya opens discussion of this pattern by polling the audience — "Who has tried to run Claude Code on a cron?" — implying meaningful practitioner adoption of this approach. ↗

Points of disagreement

Criticism: infrastructure burden

Maya criticizes cron-based workflows for the operational overhead they impose, rhetorically asking attendees to "keep your hands up if you've enjoyed building all of that infra and maintaining that job" — implying that few find the experience satisfactory. ↗

Alternative: Routines

Routines are positioned as a direct alternative to cron, explicitly framed as removing the need to manage this infrastructure: "We built routines so you don't have to focus on maintaining all of this infra." ↗ This suggests Routines abstract away the scheduling and maintenance concerns that make raw cron usage painful in agentic contexts.