Product

Cron monitoring

Track heartbeats from scheduled jobs and background tasks. Know when a job missed its run, started late, or never finished — without checking logs.

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How it works

  • Each job sends a heartbeat when it starts or finishes
  • Watchcat expects the heartbeat within a defined interval
  • Missing or delayed signals trigger alerts
  • Optional start/end tracking helps detect overlaps

How it works in detail

Heartbeat model

  • Each scheduled job must send a signal within its expected interval.
  • Watchcat checks whether the latest heartbeat arrived when it should have.
  • If no heartbeat arrives, the job is treated as missing and an alert can be triggered.

Grace period and late runs

  • A grace period gives the job extra time before it is marked as failed.
  • This avoids alerts for small scheduling delays or short queue backlogs.
  • If the heartbeat arrives after the grace period, that run is still treated as a failure.

Start and finish tracking

  • Jobs can send a start signal, a finish signal, or both.
  • Start and finish tracking helps identify jobs that began but never completed.
  • If a job starts before the previous run finishes, Watchcat can detect an overlap.

Incident lifecycle

  • An incident is created when a job is considered failed, missing, late, or overlapping.
  • The incident stays open while Watchcat continues to see invalid or missing runs.
  • The incident is resolved when the next valid run occurs.

Send a heartbeat

One HTTP request from your job is all it takes. Use curl, wget, or any HTTP client.

Works with system cron, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Make.com, n8n, and any script or scheduler that can make an HTTP request.

Basic — ping when the job finishes

curl https://watchcat.io/cron/YOUR_TOKEN

Start / end tracking — detect jobs that began but never finished

curl https://watchcat.io/cron/YOUR_TOKEN/start
# ... run your job ...
curl https://watchcat.io/cron/YOUR_TOKEN/end

Explicit failure — signal an error without relying on a missing heartbeat

curl https://watchcat.io/cron/YOUR_TOKEN/fail

Why it matters

  • Cron jobs have no built-in alert when they miss a run or finish late
  • Grace periods absorb small scheduling delays without triggering false alerts
  • Overlap detection catches runaway jobs that start before the previous run finishes

Typical use cases

  • A nightly database backup that must finish before the business day starts
  • A background worker processing invoices — stuck jobs cost money, not just time
  • A Make.com scenario syncing leads at 03:00 — if it stops, nobody notices until noon

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