use-cases / mute-flaky-job / hero

CRON · MANAGED ENTRIES · PATCH

Mute the flaky job without losing it

The hourly metrics export has been failing for three days. You're on call tonight. PATCH the managed cron entry with enabled:false — the schedule, the command, the comment all stay. The job is in a defined state: present and muted, waiting for someone to fix it.

Read the cron docs

cron.containers.hoody.com · entries

https://cron.containers.hoody.com/users/me/entrieslive

onidschedulecommandstatus

a1f2*/5 * * * *curl -fsS http://prod/healthenabled
c4b90 3 * * */usr/local/bin/backup.shenabled
e7d30 * * * */srv/cron/metrics-export.shmuted · 2d ago · @alex
muted 2d ago · by @alex“flaking on monday with prod-db — see #pager-fri”
9b21@hourlypsql -c 'VACUUM ANALYZE'enabled
f0a80 9 * * 1-5/srv/cron/digest.shenabled
d3c7*/15 * * * */srv/cron/reindex-search.shpatching…

PATCH/users/me/entries/d3c7request body

{
  "enabled": false,
  "comment": "reindex flaking — see thread"
}

the toggle is just a PATCH · the entry never leaves the list

use-cases / mute-flaky-job / mechanism

Mute is a single PATCH

Hoody Cron's managed entries are a JSON resource: each row has an id, a schedule, a command, a comment, and an enabled flag. Flipping enabled to false is one PATCH. The entry stays in the crontab so the next person can read it and decide what to do.

terminal · on-call laptop

PATCH · mute

# mute the flaky entry — entry stays in the crontab
curl -X PATCH \
  https://cron.containers.hoody.com/users/me/entries/e7d3 \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '["enabled": false, "comment": "flaking on monday with prod-db — see #pager"]'

# response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
{ "id":"e7d3", "enabled":false, "schedule":"0 * * * *",
  "command":"/srv/cron/metrics-export.sh", ... }

terminal · the next morning

GET · verify

# the entry is still on the list — just not running
curl GET https://cron.containers.hoody.com/users/me/entries

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
[
  { "id":"a1f2", "enabled":true,  ... },
  { "id":"e7d3", "enabled":false, "comment":"flaking — see #pager" },
  { "id":"9b21", "enabled":true,  ... }
]
# present and muted — the on-call hand-off has somewhere to point

The PATCH does not delete, rewrite, or move the entry — it flips one boolean. Hand-off is one line: 'metrics-export entry e7d3 is muted, see hoody-cron, please look.'

use-cases / mute-flaky-job / states

Three states, one entry

An entry on a Hoody crontab is always in exactly one of three states. Each state has different consequences for who knows what tomorrow morning.

ENTRY · e7d3 · /srv/cron/metrics-export.shPATCH switches between states — never destructive

ENABLED

Runs on schedule, paged on failure

The entry is in the crontab and the kernel cron daemon picks it up every hour. Failures wake on-call. This is the default for healthy jobs.

MUTED

Present, paused, annotated

enabled:false. The entry is still in the crontab so the team can read its schedule, command, and comment. The cron daemon skips it. No 2am page tomorrow, no one forgets it exists.

DELETED

Gone — and so is the context

Once you DELETE, the schedule, the command, the comment, the reason — all of it leaves the crontab. The next on-call has nothing to grep. Mute is the choice that keeps the memory.

Mute is the middle state most schedulers don't have a name for. Hoody Cron does, because enabled is a first-class field on the managed entry.

use-cases / mute-flaky-job / powers

Why a defined muted state matters

When you can't fix a job tonight, the question is what shape its absence takes by tomorrow. Mute makes that shape readable.

HAND-OFF

The on-call message is one line

Instead of pasting a Slack thread or a deleted-line PR, the message is the entry id. Tomorrow's on-call opens the cron URL, reads the comment, and knows where to start.

AUDIT

Every mute is a row, not a memory

GET /entries returns enabled:false alongside the comment. Build an audit panel by filtering. Who muted it, why, and how long ago is in the JSON, not in someone's DMs.

REVERSIBLE

Un-muting is the inverse PATCH

When the underlying issue is fixed, one more PATCH with enabled:true puts the entry back on schedule. No rewriting the cron expression, no risk of typos, no commit-and-deploy cycle.

use-cases / mute-flaky-job / capacity

What the cron API gives you

Numbers come from the Hoody Cron managed-entries surface, not invented benchmarks.

ONE METHODPATCH
PATCH /users/[user]/entries/[id] accepts a partial body. Send ["enabled":false] alone — schedule, command, and comment are untouched.
FIELDS PRESERVED5+1
Five-field schedule, command, comment, expires_at, and id all persist across the mute. The kernel crontab still reflects the entry — just commented out by the cron service.
REWRITES0
No file edit, no PR, no deploy. The mute round-trip is one HTTP call from any terminal, including the one on your phone.

Per the Hoody Cron Managed Entries API: each entry carries an enabled boolean alongside schedule, command, comment, and optional expires_at. PATCH accepts partial bodies.

use-cases / mute-flaky-job / punchline

Disabled isn't deleted — the entry waits for someone to fix it.

tonight · on call · 23:14tomorrow · the team · 09:00

WHAT THE OLD WORKFLOW LOOKED LIKEvim crontab → comment line → commit → PR → merge → deploysix steps · loses comment context · risks a typo on a tired night

WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE NOWcurl -X PATCH .../entries/e7d3 -d '["enabled":false]'one PATCH · entry stays in the list · note travels with it

See the PATCH spec

use-cases / mute-flaky-job / replaces

What this replaces

The usual ways teams 'temporarily' park a flaky cron line. Each one is either destructive, lossy, or two PRs away from production.

commenting out crontab lines by handLoses the structured enabled flag · easy to forget
deleting the entry and 'remembering'Schedule, command, and reason all leave with it
manual // FIXME comments in codeLives in a repo, not in the schedule that runs
Slack threads as on-call memorySearchable for a week · then it's nobody's job
GitHub issues for muted-but-not-deleted jobsAn issue for a thing that's still on the crontab — duplicate state
Terraform-managed cron configPlan, apply, deploy — for one boolean field

use-cases / mute-flaky-job / cta

Stop deleting flaky jobs at 2am. Mute them, leave a note, and let tomorrow's on-call read the JSON.

Read the cron docs

use-cases / mute-flaky-job / related

Read the others

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Exec·Agent·Code·Files

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Snapshots·Containers

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Display·Terminal·Files·Containers+1

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Agent·Snapshots·Containers·Browser+2

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Pipe

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Pipe

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Pipe

Inter-container IPC without the message broker

Container A writes to a pipe path. Container B reads from the same path. Backpressure is the connection. No Redis, no queue, no broker.

Pipe·Containers

Tail your agent on the train, get pinged when it lands

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ffmpeg captures the mic, pipes to a URL. The other end curls and plays the audio. No Zoom, no SDK, no signaling server.

Pipe

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Pipe·Agent·Containers

Replay this morning's incident to the whole team

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Pipe·Files

The fastest 'send me that file' you've ever typed

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Pipe

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One GPU runs llama.cpp. Its tokens stream into a pipe path with ?n=50. Fifty containers curl the same URL and split the stream.

Pipe·Daemon

A live metrics dashboard with no metrics backend

Each container's monitoring loop curls a metric to a pipe URL. The dashboard curls the same URL with ?progress and renders the SSE stream.

Pipe

The cron job that deletes itself when you're done

POST a managed cron entry with expires_at set 48 hours out. The job runs on schedule, then removes itself — no reminder, no cleanup PR, no stale entry.

Cron

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A hoody-cron entry that fires at 02:55 UTC, curls the snapshots URL, and names the artifact pre-migration-2026-05-04. Five minutes later the migration runs. If it succeeds, the snapshot sits idle and costs nothing. If it fails, you restore in 30 seconds with a single PATCH.

Cron·Snapshots

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Cron·Containers

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Cron·Agent·Containers

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Cron·SQLite·Exec

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Cron·Containers

On-call escalation that ages out with the shift

POST a cron entry with expires_at = shift end. When the shift ends, the entry deletes itself. The next on-call posts their own.

Cron·Notifications

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Cron·Browser·SQLite·Files

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Cron·Containers

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Cron·Agent

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Each cron run POSTs a heartbeat to a notifications endpoint. A second cron checks last-heartbeat and pages on silence. Silence is the alert.

Cron·Notifications

Keep the last 24 hours as 24 snapshots

An hourly cron POSTs a snapshot named with the hour. After 24 hours each new snapshot overwrites yesterday's at the same hour. The 24-floor time machine.

Cron·Snapshots

Replay this morning's webhooks at the same time tomorrow

You captured 30 minutes of real Stripe traffic into a hoody-files folder. One cron entry replays it against staging at 9am every weekday — same volume, same payloads, same time-of-day pressure.

Cron·Files·Exec

Edit your crontab from a phone, in the airport

Open the cron URL on your phone in the gate area. Tap a row, change a single field of the cron expression, hit Save. PATCH lands. The job fires tonight on the new schedule. No SSH session, no jump box, no laptop.

Cron·Terminal

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Cron·Exec·Pipe

An agent that grades yesterday's agents

A nightly cron POSTs to the supervisor agent with yesterday's agent traces from SQLite. The supervisor scores each one. Cron is the supervisor.

Cron·Agent·SQLite

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Cron·Files

Roll your TLS certificates without an SSH session

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Cron·Exec

A weekly canary that tries to break production

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The hobby-project graveyard you can afford to keep alive

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Containers

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Containers·Snapshots

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Files·Containers

Fifty demo environments for fifty sales calls

Each prospect gets a real, isolated copy of your product seeded with their data. Cloned from a snapshot. Theirs to keep for a week.

Containers·Snapshots

Mute the flaky job without losing it

Mute is a single PATCH

Three states, one entry

Runs on schedule, paged on failure

Present, paused, annotated

Gone — and so is the context

Why a defined muted state matters

The on-call message is one line

Every mute is a row, not a memory

Un-muting is the inverse PATCH

What the cron API gives you

What this replaces

Read the others

Sixty containers on one server

Onboard a developer with one link

API endpoints that materialize on demand

Branch computers like Git

Real VS Code on your phone

AI agents that spawn other AI agents

One sandbox per customer, automatically

Wake up to a finished prototype

Emergency production fix from your phone

Tail production logs to a URL anyone can curl

Push one build to thirty CI workers at once

Watch your agent think from the coffee shop

Share your screen with a URL, not a meeting invite

Move 200GB between clouds with two curls

Send a teammate a database state in one line

Stream LLM tokens to anything that reads HTTP

A progress bar your boss can spectate without joining

The webhook fan-out you didn't have to build

A CI cache that's just two curl commands

Drag-drop uploads into your script

Broadcast a workshop to 200 viewers from your laptop

Inter-container IPC without the message broker

Tail your agent on the train, get pinged when it lands

A microphone over HTTP, in two terminals

Five agents, five pipes, one verdict

Replay this morning's incident to the whole team

The fastest 'send me that file' you've ever typed

Run a local LLM, serve it to your whole fleet

A live metrics dashboard with no metrics backend

The cron job that deletes itself when you're done

Snapshot the container right before the nightly migration

A separate crontab for every customer, automatically

Wake an agent at 3am, retire it at 4

Daily rollups without an orchestrator

A crontab per branch, deployed with the code

On-call escalation that ages out with the shift

Hourly scrape, daily digest, weekly archive — one container

Let your customers BYO their own cron schedule

Schedule the agent, not the script

A heartbeat for the silent jobs

Keep the last 24 hours as 24 snapshots

Replay this morning's webhooks at the same time tomorrow

Edit your crontab from a phone, in the airport

A scheduled digest that fans out to 200 inboxes

An agent that grades yesterday's agents

Cleanup jobs that schedule their own retirement

Roll your TLS certificates without an SSH session

A weekly canary that tries to break production

The hobby-project graveyard you can afford to keep alive

A preview environment per pull request, all month

Run a 12-product portfolio from one bare-metal box

Kill the staging-server tax

Forty client sites, one rent, one dashboard

Replace the E2B bill with the bare metal you already rent

Idle staging costs nothing, so staging stops getting deleted

Per-customer sandboxes at fleet scale

The CI cache that's not an S3 line item

Fifty demo environments for fifty sales calls