nodecode-cron-gate

Cron Gate: skip scheduled agent runs that would do nothing. A Nodecode rewrite of superlowburn/hermes-jev-cron-gate by superlowburn.

A job that runs every hour to check on something usually wakes up, spends a whole model run, and reports that nothing has changed. A gate asks TypeSafe Jev one yes/no question about a small snapshot of what the job reads -- the queue file, the last lines of a log, whether the folder it works on changed, a localhost page -- and answers :wake or :skip in about half a second, for a fraction of a cent.

(cron-gate:gate "heartbeat"
                :question "Running the agent now would make real new progress, rather than re-reporting that it is still waiting on approval."
                :sources '((:file "~/proj/APPROVALS.md")
                           (:file "~/proj/log.jsonl" :tail 900)
                           (:changed ("~/proj/src"))))
(cron-gate:check "heartbeat")
;; => "cron-gate heartbeat: skip, useful=0.05", :SKIP

Get it

Tell the agent "add the cron-gate cell", or run nodecode add nc://cron-gate.

Set it up

A TypeSafe key, from console.typesafe.ai: set TYPESAFE_API_KEY in the environment, or save api_key in the cell's cron-gate section. base_url points at a TypeSafe of your own; model defaults to jev-latest.

What leaves the machine. Each decision posts the snapshot -- what those sources hold, up to 6,000 characters, from the end -- and your question to api.typesafe.ai, with the key. Point sources at what a person would glance at, not at secrets.

Use it

Put the check at the top of the gated job's prompt:

Run (cron-gate:check "heartbeat"). If it answers :SKIP, reply "nothing to do" in one line and stop.

(cron-gate:gate NAME :question ... :sources ... :skip-below 0.2 :max-skips 4) defines or updates a gate. Sources are (:file PATH [:tail N]), (:changed (PATHS)) (modified since the last wake?), (:url "http://127.0.0.1:PORT/...") (localhost only; any other host is named and skipped), and (:text "...").
(cron-gate:check NAME) decides now, logs it, and answers the line and :wake or :skip.
(cron-gate:gates) is every gate with its runs, skips and share skipped, read from log.jsonl under the home.
(cron-gate:forget NAME) drops a gate's definition and counters.

The model can do the same through the cron_gate tool (define, check, status, forget) -- so "gate my 9am job, look at APPROVALS.md" needs no Lisp from you -- and /cron-gate lists the gates or checks one.

It fails open. No key, no config, a broken source, a network error, or an answer of the wrong shape all wake the run. After max-skips skips in a row (4 by default) the gate wakes anyway, so a job can never stall silently.

What the rewrite carries, and what it does not

Carried from the original: the question over a state snapshot, the four source kinds and the 6,000-character cap that keeps the end, the localhost-only rule, the skip rate and the per-gate log, the skip cap, and failing open on every path.

Not carried: Hermes cron's pre-run --script slot, which has no Nodecode equivalent -- a scheduled job here runs a prompt, so the gate is a verb the prompt calls first. The generated wrapper script, and setup/remove writing it into the harness's script directory, go with it. test is (cron-gate:check NAME), which is the decision itself, and it waits one request like a real run rather than a dry run of it.