Schedule cron jobs, run daily briefings, set up workflows, and deploy your agent so it runs 24/7.

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What you will learn

Schedule automated tasks with cron jobs
Deploy OpenClaw to a server for 24/7 operation
Monitor your agent's health and logs
Set up a self-check system

Why this matters

So far, your agent only does things when you message it. In this module, you make it proactive — running tasks on a schedule and staying online around the clock.

Scheduling tasks with cron

OpenClaw has built-in cron support. You can schedule any prompt to run automatically.

Add a cron job

openclaw cron add "0 7 * * *" --message "Generate my daily briefing and send it to me"

This runs every day at 7:00 AM. The cron syntax:

┌───────── minute (0-59)
│ ┌─────── hour (0-23)
│ │ ┌───── day of month (1-31)
│ │ │ ┌─── month (1-12)
│ │ │ │ ┌─ day of week (0-6, 0=Sunday)
│ │ │ │ │
0 7 * * *

Common schedules

Schedule	Cron expression	Example
Every morning at 7am	`0 7 * * *`	Daily briefing
Every weekday at 9am	`0 9 * * 1-5`	Work week digest
Every 30 minutes	`/30 * * *`	Health check
Monday at 10am	`0 10 * * 1`	Weekly summary
First of each month	`0 9 1 * *`	Monthly report

Manage cron jobs

# List all scheduled jobs
openclaw cron list

# Remove a job
openclaw cron remove [job-id]

See the CLI Cheatsheet for the full list of openclaw cron flags and options.

Deployment: Keeping your agent online

Your agent currently runs on your computer. If your laptop sleeps or shuts down, the agent stops. There are three ways to keep it running.

Option 1: Prevent sleep (simplest)

If you want to keep using your current machine:

caffeinate -d &

This keeps your Mac from sleeping. Simple, but your agent goes down if the machine restarts.

Option 2: Deploy to a VPS (most reliable)

A small cloud server costs $5-6/month and runs 24/7.

Setup steps:

Provision an Ubuntu 22.04+ server (1 vCPU, 1GB RAM is enough)
Install Node.js 24
Install OpenClaw:

curl -fsSL https://openclaw.ai/install.sh | bash

Run the setup wizard:

openclaw onboard --install-daemon

Copy your config from your local machine:

# From your local machine:
scp ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json user@your-server:~/.openclaw/
scp ~/.openclaw/SOUL.md user@your-server:~/.openclaw/
scp ~/.openclaw/USER.md user@your-server:~/.openclaw/

Start the daemon:

openclaw gateway start --daemon

Verify:

openclaw gateway status

The daemon registers as a systemd service automatically — it starts on boot and restarts on failure.

Option 3: Home server (no monthly cost)

If you have a Raspberry Pi, old laptop, or NAS, you can run OpenClaw on it. Same setup as VPS, but the machine stays in your home. Your data never leaves your network.

Syncing configuration

When you update your config locally, sync it to the server:

rsync -avz ~/.openclaw/ user@your-server:~/.openclaw/ --exclude workspace/

Then restart the gateway on the server:

ssh user@your-server "openclaw gateway restart"

Monitoring

Check status

openclaw gateway status
openclaw cron list

View logs

openclaw logs --tail 50

Automated health check

Add a self-check cron job that alerts you if something breaks:

{
  "id": "self-check",
  "schedule": "*/30 * * * *",
  "prompt": "Self-check: confirm you are running and responding. Reply with 'ok' only.",
  "channel": "telegram",
  "suppressIfOk": true
}

This checks every 30 minutes and only notifies you if something is wrong.

Health endpoint

The Gateway exposes a health endpoint you can monitor externally:

curl http://localhost:18789/health

Security for deployed agents

When your agent runs on a server:

The Gateway binds to 127.0.0.1:18789 by default (not publicly accessible)
Never expose port 18789 directly to the internet
Use Tailscale for remote access (see Module 8)
Keep your config file permissions restricted: chmod 600 ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json

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Module 6: Autonomous Tasks