linux_cron
Compose a crontab schedule line from minute, hour, day-of-month, month, and day-of-week inputs, outputting the expression with a plain-English explanation and common examples.
Instructions
Cron Job Schedule and Crontab Line Generator. Build a 5-field crontab schedule from individual minute/hour/day-of-month/month/day-of-week inputs and assemble the ready-to-paste crontab line " ", plus a plain-English explanation of each field and a curated list of common schedule examples. It only BUILDS the schedule text — it never installs a cron job, edits crontab, or touches the system. Use this to compose or teach a schedule from parts; use time_cron_parser instead when you already HAVE a cron expression and want to decode it to English or preview real next-run times (this tool's nextRuns is a placeholder note, not computed times). Runs locally via a Node bridge: read-only, non-destructive, idempotent, offline, contacts no external service, and is rate-limited (anonymous 30/min, 200/hr, 1000/day).
Input Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| minute | No | Minute field (0-59). Accepts *, lists (0,30), ranges (0-29), steps (*/5). | * |
| hour | No | Hour field (0-23). Accepts *, lists, ranges, steps (*/6). | * |
| dayOfMonth | No | Day-of-month field (1-31). Accepts *, lists, ranges, steps. | * |
| month | No | Month field (1-12). Accepts *, lists, ranges; numbers are named in the explanation. | * |
| dayOfWeek | No | Day-of-week field (0-6, 0=Sunday). Accepts *, lists, ranges; numbers are named in the explanation. | * |
| command | No | Command appended verbatim after the expression to form the crontab line; not validated or executed. | /path/to/script.sh |
| generateExamples | No | When true, includes the curated examples array of common cron schedules. |
Output Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| success | No | Always true on a 200 response. | |
| cronLine | No | Full crontab line: the 5-field expression followed by the command. | |
| expression | No | The assembled 5-field cron expression, e.g. "*/5 * * * *". | |
| command | No | The command echoed back as used in cronLine. | |
| explanation | No | Plain-English breakdown of each field plus a combined summary sentence. | |
| nextRuns | No | Placeholder only — contains a note and the expression; actual next-run times are NOT computed (use time_cron_parser for real firing times). | |
| examples | No | Present when generateExamples is not false. Common cron schedules. | |
| error | No | Present instead of the result fields when generation fails (HTTP 400). |