n8n-cli-from-cron

name	n8n-cli-from-cron
description	Convert crontab entries into equivalent n8n workflows. Reads cron jobs and generates one workflow per entry. Use when migrating off bare cron onto n8n for visibility and error handling.
user_invocable	true

/n8n-cli-from-cron — Crontab → n8n Workflows

Take a crontab (or a list of cron-style scheduled tasks) and generate one n8n workflow per entry.

Procedure

1. Get the source:

   • User pastes their crontab content
   • Or user provides a path: cat /etc/crontab or crontab -l
   • Parse each line into: schedule (cron expression), command, optional comment

2. For each cron entry:

   • Detect the command type:
     • Shell command (bash /path/to/script.sh)
     • Python script (python3 /path/to/foo.py)
     • Node script
     • HTTP call (curl https://...)
     • Database query (mysql -e "...")
     • Backup job (rsync, tar, etc.)
   • Extract intent: read the comment if present. Otherwise, ask the user what the job does.

3. Map to n8n nodes:

   • Schedule trigger with the same cron expression
   • For shell commands → Execute Command node (if self-hosted with shell access) OR rebuild the command's logic in native n8n nodes
   • For curl → HTTP Request node
   • For Python/Node scripts → Code node (paste the script body) OR if it's reasonable, rebuild as native nodes
   • For DB queries → MySQL/Postgres/etc. node with credential
   • For backups → Read/Write Files + S3/SFTP node
   • For email reports → Send Email node

4. Add observability that bare cron didn't have:

   • Error handler branch on every external call
   • Slack/email alert node on failure (suggest a default alert channel)
   • Optional: log the run to a database or file for audit

5. Generate one workflow per cron entry (or grouped if the user prefers fewer workflows):

   • Save each as JSON
   • Show the user the proposed workflow names and what they'll do
   • Confirm before importing

6. Bulk import (only after approval):

   • n8n-cli wf import for each
   • DO NOT activate by default — let the user verify each one in the UI first
   • Print a summary: "Imported 12 workflows. Activate them when ready: n8n-cli wf activate <id>"

7. Suggest decommissioning the old cron entries:

   • Don't delete from crontab automatically
   • Print a checklist: "Once you've verified each n8n workflow runs correctly, comment out the corresponding cron entry. Don't delete until you've seen the n8n version run successfully at least 3 times."

Output format

• Show the parsed crontab as a numbered list
• For each entry, show: original cron, original command, proposed n8n node graph, name
• Walk through approval one entry at a time for tricky cases
• For trivial entries (single curl, single script call), batch-confirm

Tips

• The biggest win of moving cron → n8n is visibility. Every run shows up in the n8n execution history with status, duration, output. No more silent cron failures.
• Some cron entries are too complex to be worth migrating (multi-stage shell pipelines, etc.). For those, suggest leaving them in cron and having n8n monitor them via a heartbeat workflow.
• Time zones: cron usually runs in the host's local time, n8n in the instance's configured time. Confirm and adjust the cron expressions if needed.
• For shell scripts that read environment variables, the n8n equivalent reads from credentials or n8n variables. Walk through each env var the script uses.
• This pairs with /n8n-cli-meta-monitor — once your jobs are in n8n, you also get failure alerting for free.