Tutorial Overview

Series index: Hermes Agent Tutorial Series

When You Need This: Read this article if you need automated/recurring tasks, daily reports, nightly backups, or weekly audits running unattended.

This tutorial covers Hermes Agent’s Cron Scheduling — built-in automation for recurring tasks.

What you will learn

• ✅ Cron architecture in Hermes
• ✅ Creating scheduled tasks with natural language
• ✅ Delivery to messaging platforms
• ✅ Task types and examples
• ✅ Managing and monitoring schedules

Cron Architecture

How Hermes cron works

flowchart TD
    A[Cron Definition] --> B[Scheduler Daemon]
    B --> C{Trigger time?}
    C -->|Yes| D[Spawn Hermes task]
    C -->|No| E[Wait]
    E --> C
    D --> F[Execute task]
    F --> G[Generate output]
    G --> H[Deliver to platform]

    style B fill:#e1f5ff
    style H fill:#fff3e0

Components

Creating Scheduled Tasks

Natural language scheduling

Hermes accepts natural language for schedule definitions:

# Daily report at 9am
hermes cron add "every day at 9am" --task "generate daily report"

# Weekly summary on Fridays
hermes cron add "every friday at 5pm" --task "weekly summary"

# Hourly health check
hermes cron add "every hour" --task "check system status"

Standard cron format

Also supports traditional cron syntax:

hermes cron add "0 9 * * *" --task "daily report"
hermes cron add "0 17 * * 5" --task "friday summary"

Task definition

Tasks can be:

• Natural language prompts
• Skill invocations
• Python scripts via RPC

# Natural language task
--task "Summarize today's activities from memory"

# Skill invocation
--task "/daily-report"

# Python script
--task "python:scripts/backup.py"

Delivery to Platforms

Specify delivery target

# Deliver to Telegram
hermes cron add "daily at 9am" --task "report" --deliver telegram

# Deliver to Discord
hermes cron add "weekly friday 5pm" --task "summary" --deliver discord

# Deliver to CLI (stored in file)
hermes cron add "hourly" --task "check" --deliver file:reports/

Delivery configuration

cron:
  delivery:
    telegram:
      enabled: true
      chat_id: "-100123456789"
    discord:
      enabled: true
      channel_id: "123456789"

Delivery flow

sequenceDiagram
    participant S as Scheduler
    participant H as Hermes
    participant O as Output
    participant P as Platform

    S->>H: Trigger task
    H->>O: Generate output
    O->>P: Format for platform
    P->>P: Send message

    Note over P: Telegram/Discord/Slack/CLI

    style P fill:#fff3e0

Task Types

Daily reports

hermes cron add "daily at 9am" --task "Generate daily progress report:
- List completed tasks from memory
- Summarize key accomplishments
- Identify blockers
- Suggest priorities for today" --deliver telegram

Nightly backups

hermes cron add "daily at 2am" --task "python:scripts/backup_db.py" --deliver file:backups/

Weekly audits

hermes cron add "weekly monday 10am" --task "Audit last week:
- Review all task completions
- Identify patterns and inefficiencies
- Generate improvement recommendations" --deliver slack

Hourly health checks

hermes cron add "hourly" --task "Check:
- API connectivity
- Memory usage
- Model availability
Report any issues" --deliver telegram --alert-only

Custom task examples

Schedule Management

View all schedules

hermes cron list

Output:

ID      Schedule           Task                 Delivery     Next Run
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
1       daily 9am          daily report         telegram     2026-04-14 09:00
2       weekly fri 5pm     weekly summary       discord      2026-04-19 17:00
3       hourly             health check         telegram     2026-04-13 17:00

Pause a schedule

hermes cron pause 1

Resume a schedule

hermes cron resume 1

Remove a schedule

hermes cron remove 1

Edit a schedule

hermes cron edit 1 --schedule "daily at 10am" --deliver slack

Monitoring

View execution history

hermes cron history

Output:

Task ID   Executed          Status    Output Size
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
1         2026-04-13 09:00  Success   1.2KB
1         2026-04-12 09:00  Success   1.1KB
1         2026-04-11 09:00  Failed    API error
3         2026-04-13 17:00  Success   0.5KB

View logs

hermes cron logs 1 --last 10

Alert on failures

cron:
  alerts:
    on_failure: true
    on_timeout: true
    delivery: telegram

Advanced Features

Conditional execution

hermes cron add "daily 9am" --task "report" --condition "memory.has_activities"

Only runs if Hermes has activities in memory.

Retry on failure

cron:
  retry:
    max_attempts: 3
    interval: 5m

Timezone support

hermes cron add "daily 9am" --task "report" --timezone "America/New_York"

Troubleshooting

Schedule not executing

Cause: Daemon not running.

Fix:

hermes cron daemon start
hermes cron status

Output not delivered

Cause: Platform not configured.

Fix:

hermes gateway status
hermes config set cron.delivery.telegram.enabled true

Task timing wrong

Cause: Timezone mismatch.

Fix:

hermes config set cron.timezone "UTC"
hermes cron edit 1 --timezone "America/New_York"

Summary

Cron Scheduling provides unattended automation:

1. Natural language — Easy schedule definition
2. Platform delivery — Results sent to Telegram/Discord/etc.
3. Task flexibility — Prompts, skills, or scripts
4. Monitoring — History, logs, alerts
5. Management — Pause, resume, edit, remove

Key takeaways

• ✅ Natural language makes scheduling easy
• ✅ Results delivered to chosen platform
• ✅ Daily reports, backups, audits are common patterns
• ✅ Monitor via hermes cron history

Series navigation:

• ← Previous: Tutorial 7: Terminal Backends — Local and Cloud Deployment
• → Next: Tutorial 9: MCP Integration — Extending Hermes
• Back: Series Index