# ⏱️ Cron Scheduler

> [!NOTE]
> A fleet-wide inventory of every known scheduled job — orchestration flows, system timers, automation-managed cron, app-internal schedules — visualized as a heatmap so a new job's time can be picked without colliding with existing load.

## The heatmap

```mermaid
flowchart LR
    Sources["Job sources<br/>flows · timers · cron · app schedules"] --> Table["Structured inventory<br/>name, host, category,<br/>schedule, duration, resource tags"]
    Table --> Weight["Weighted load calculation"]
    Weight --> Grid["7×24 grid<br/>day × hour"]
    Grid --> Bands["4 color bands<br/>quieter → busier"]
```

Each cell's color reflects a **computed load weight**, not a raw job count: a base weight per job, plus a duration-based weight, plus resource-intensity weight (disk/CPU/network, summed if a job carries multiple tags), plus an extra weight for anything tagged as a backup job. Jobs whose time can't be resolved to a specific day and hour are excluded from the grid and listed separately rather than forced into a misleading cell.

> [!TIP]
> Clicking a populated cell expands the full job list for that slot — name, host, category, and whether that job's schedule can actually be moved or is fixed by whatever app owns it.

## Honest about its own limitation

> [!WARNING]
> **This is a manually-maintained inventory, not an auto-refreshed one.** The schema has a "last synced" column, but nothing currently populates it — no automated process re-scans the fleet to keep this current. Entries get added or edited by hand as jobs are created or changed. Documented as a real limitation rather than presented as more automated than it actually is.

## A real, unresolved bug this system surfaced

> [!IMPORTANT]
> One backup job's prune step targets a datastore name that doesn't actually exist — not a scheduling collision, an orphaned config that's been silently failing. Two fixes are on the table (drop the dead job and let a different retention mechanism be authoritative, or repoint it at the real datastore name and let its richer retention rules take over) — deliberately not resolved yet, tracked openly rather than silently patched over with a guess.

---
Related stacks: [`stacks/platform/dashy/`](../stacks/platform/dashy/), [`stacks/platform/nocodb/`](../stacks/platform/nocodb/)