cron-hygiene

Cron jobs running in main session mode inherit the full conversation history — re-sending thousands of tokens of context on every invocation. A cron running every 5 minutes in main session mode can turn a $10/month setup into $80+ (issue #20092). This skill audits all configured cron skills weekly and enforces hygiene standards.

Difference from context-budget-guard

context-budget-guard monitors live session token usage in real-time. cron-hygiene is about the structural problem: cron jobs that are architecturally wasteful because they're configured in the wrong session mode.

Cron Wakeup Behaviour

Runs every Monday at 09:00 (cron: "0 9 * * 1"). On each wakeup:

1. Read the list of registered cron skills from OpenClaw config
2. For each skill, check its session mode (main vs isolated)
3. Estimate cost impact: crons in main mode × frequency × estimated context size
4. Flag violations and surface recommendations

Hygiene rules

Rule	Check	Severity
Session isolation	Cron skills should use isolated session mode	High
Reply conciseness	Cron output should be < 500 tokens	Medium
Frequency sanity	Crons running < 10min apart need justification	Medium
Dead crons	Cron skills with no state update in 7+ days	Low
Overlapping crons	Two skills scheduled at the same time	Low

Weekly report format

Cron Hygiene Report — 2026-03-16
────────────────────────────────
5 crons audited | 2 violations | Est. monthly waste: $12.40

HIGH:   persistent-memory-hygiene — runs in main session mode
        Fix: add sessionMode: isolated to skill config
        Est. savings: ~$8.20/month

MEDIUM: long-running-task-management — fires every 15min
        Output not constrained (last run: 1,240 tokens)
        Recommendation: add reply_token_limit: 200 to skill config

Remediation

To fix a main-session cron manually:

python3 audit.py --fix-session <skill-name>

This writes sessionMode: isolated to the skill's OpenClaw config entry.