rote

A cron that remembers what it did.

Why

cron runs your jobs and forgets them. When a backup silently stops firing or a script starts exiting non-zero at 3am, there's nothing to look at — no exit code, no timing, no output, often no sign it ran at all.

rote runs jobs on a schedule and records every run: exit code, duration, whether it timed out, and the captured stdout/stderr. A terminal dashboard shows, at a glance, which jobs are healthy, when each runs next, and what the last failure actually printed.

Install

go install github.com/zhh2001/rote/cmd/rote@latest

Or grab a prebuilt binary from the Releases page.

Homebrew (available once the first release is tagged):

brew install zhh2001/tap/rote

Quick start

Drop a config at ~/.config/rote/jobs.toml:

[[job]]
name = "heartbeat"
schedule = "every 5m"
command = "curl -fsS https://example.com/health"

[[job]]
name = "nightly-backup"
schedule = "daily at 03:00"
command = "/usr/local/bin/backup.sh"
timeout = "30m"
on_failure = "notify-send 'backup failed'"

Then run the scheduler with the live dashboard:

rote

Or run it headless as a daemon (no UI):

rote start

Configuration

Jobs live in a TOML file as an array of [[job]] tables:

Field	Required	Description
name	yes	Unique label for the job.
schedule	yes	When to run (see below).
command	yes	Shell command, run via sh -c.
timeout	no	Max run time, e.g. "30m", "90s". Omit for no limit.
on_failure	no	Command run once when the job fails.

Unknown keys are rejected, so a misspelled timout is caught instead of silently ignored.

Schedule syntax

Standard 5-field cron works:

*/15 * * * *      every 15 minutes
0 3 * * *         03:00 daily
0 9 * * 1         09:00 on Mondays

So do these plain-language forms:

every 5m          every 90s          every 1h30m
hourly            daily              weekly            monthly
daily at 03:00
every monday at 09:00

The smallest effective interval is about 1 second — sub-second schedules are rounded up.

Files

• Config: your user config dir, i.e. ~/.config/rote/jobs.toml (override with -c/--config).
• Database: your XDG state dir, i.e. ~/.local/state/rote/rote.db (override with --db).

Commands

Command	What it does
rote	Schedule jobs and show the live dashboard together.
rote start	Run the scheduler headless, as a daemon.
rote tui	Read-only dashboard for an already-running scheduler.
rote run <job>	Run one job now, record it, and print a summary. Propagates the exit code (124 on timeout, 127 if the job isn't found).
rote list	List jobs with their next and last run.
rote logs <job> [-n N] [-o]	Recent runs for a job; -n limits the count, -o includes the last run's output.
rote version	Print the version.

In the dashboard: ↑/↓ (or k/j) to move, Enter to open a job's history, Tab to switch between the history list and the output pane, Esc to go back, r to refresh, ? for help, q to quit.

Running as a service

A minimal systemd user unit:

[Unit]
Description=rote job scheduler
After=network-online.target

[Service]
ExecStart=%h/go/bin/rote start
Restart=on-failure

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

Save it as ~/.config/systemd/user/rote.service, then:

systemctl --user enable --now rote.service

Watch it live from another terminal with rote tui.

Caveats

Don't run two schedulers against the same database. Running both rote and rote start (or two daemons) pointed at the same --db will execute every job twice. To watch a running scheduler, use the read-only rote tui.

License

MIT