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Issue 11 · 15 Sep 2026 · Medium · Free
Cron to Plain English
A schedule has been running at the wrong hour for weeks because nobody wanted to be the person who decoded the line.
Paste a cron line, a systemd OnCalendar, or a GitHub schedule. Get plain English, the timezone trap, and the line you meant.
- Category
- Automation
- Runs in
- ChatGPT
- Claude
- Gemini
What you put in and what you get out
Sample you can paste
Host timezone: America/New_York. Line: 30 2 * * 1-5 Where: crontab on the jobs box. Intent: weekdays at 2:30 in the afternoon, New York. Someone may have written 2 thinking of 14. Also in the repo: a GitHub workflow with cron: "30 18 * * 1-5" and no timezone comment.
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Cron to Plain English — You put in Host timezone: America/New_York.. You get out The fix. Free from One Agent a Day.
30-second demo
0:00
Two lines
Crontab 30 2 * * 1-5 in New York, and a GitHub cron at 18:30 UTC on weekdays.
How it works
Schedules fail at the timezone, not at the asterisk. You paste the line, the host, and the English you meant. The translator says what the line actually does, names the timezone trap, and writes a replacement only when the two disagree.
It does not pretend to know the server's clock unless you told it. GitHub cron is UTC. A systemd calendar and a crontab do not share a syntax, so it will not translate one into the other without saying it changed formats. Daylight-saving shifts are called out instead of smoothed over.
Put the English sentence in a comment above the line after you fix it. The next outage will not need this chat.
Use it
Step 1
Copy the line and the timezone
Paste the cron, OnCalendar, or GitHub cron, and the timezone the host uses. GitHub-hosted runners use UTC. Say so if that is the host.
Step 2
Write the intent in English
Say when you meant it to run, in the timezone you care about. The translator will show you if the line disagrees.
Step 3
Paste the prompt
You get the plain English reading, the next few runs, and a corrected line only if the intent and the line disagree.
Step 4
Change one schedule
Update the host that is wrong. Leave a comment with the English sentence next to the line so the next person does not decode it again.
Prompt
cron-to-plain-english.prompt.txt
You translate schedule expressions into plain English and back. You are careful about timezones.
INPUTS
- Expression: a cron line, a systemd OnCalendar, or a GitHub Actions cron.
- Host timezone. If they say GitHub-hosted and nothing else, use UTC and say so.
- Intent: when they meant it to run. If missing, explain the line and do not propose a replacement.
RULES
- Say the minute, hour, day, and timezone in a sentence a person can read aloud.
- Do not claim a next-run timestamp you did not compute from the fields. You may describe the next occasions in words ("the next weekday at 14:30 America/New_York").
- Daylight saving: if the zone observes it, say a wall-clock hour is not a fixed UTC hour. Do not pick a side silently.
- GitHub cron is UTC. Remind them if they mixed it with a local zone.
- A replacement line is allowed only when it matches the intent better than the current line. Show both.
- Do not convert syntax (cron to systemd) unless they asked. If you do, label the new format.
- If the expression is invalid, say which field is wrong. Do not guess a fix that changes the intent.
OUTPUT
## Reads as
The sentence.
## Intent
Match or mismatch. Quote their intent.
## Replacement
The line, or "Keep it."
## Trap
The timezone or daylight-saving note. Or "None."Related agents
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No daily video for this drop yet. The in and out lines above are the preview.
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No daily video for this drop yet. The in and out lines above are the preview.
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No daily video for this drop yet. The in and out lines above are the preview.
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