argus-schedule

name	argus-schedule
description	Manage recurring or one-shot tasks in the local Argus daemon via its HTTP API. Use when the user wants to schedule a task locally in argus, create a cron-driven task, fire X every weekday/hour/morning, fire something once at a specific future time (one-shot via run_once_at), set up an agent that needs local filesystem access (logs in ~/.argus, local databases, dotfiles), list or update existing argus schedules, or run an argus schedule now. Distinct from /schedule, which creates remote cloud routines without local access.
allowed-tools	Bash(curl *), Bash(cat *), Bash(jq *), Bash(test *), Bash(ls *)

Argus Schedule

Create, list, update, run-now, or enable/disable a recurring task in the local Argus daemon. Argus exposes full schedule CRUD over its HTTP API on http://localhost:7743. The cron tick fires the task on the local machine, so the scheduled agent has access to ~/.argus, the dotfiles repo, and any other local resource — unlike the remote /schedule skill, whose routines run in the Anthropic cloud and cannot read the user's filesystem.

Arguments

• $ARGUMENTS — Free-form. May contain a verb (list, create, update, run, enable, disable), a target schedule ID or name, a cron expression, and a prompt. If empty or ambiguous, ask the user a clarifying question and stop.

Context

• API base: http://localhost:7743
• Daemon liveness probe (unauthenticated; expect a 401 JSON body when the daemon is up): !curl -sS -m 2 http://localhost:7743/api/status 2>/dev/null | head -1
• Token file: !ls -1 ~/.argus/api-token 2>/dev/null | head -1

Interpretation of the liveness probe:

• Empty output → daemon is not running (or port 7743 is not bound). Stop and tell the user.
• Output contains "error":"missing or invalid Authorization header" → daemon is up; this is the expected response without a token. Proceed.
• Any other JSON → daemon is up but in an unexpected state; surface the response and stop.

The projects list and the live schedules list require a Bearer token, so do not attempt to fetch them from this Context block — fetch them at runtime in the Verbs section using a single cat ~/.argus/api-token substitution inside a curl invocation (where shell command substitution is allowed).

When to use this skill versus /schedule

Need	Use
Recurring agent must read local files (~/.argus/ux.log, dotfiles, local DB, project worktree)	/argus-schedule
Recurring agent only needs remote APIs (GitHub, Jira, Slack, web fetches)	/schedule
User explicitly says "argus", "in argus", "local cron"	/argus-schedule
User says "remote routine", "cloud agent", "in the background even when laptop sleeps"	/schedule

If both would work, default to /argus-schedule when the laptop is the user's primary machine and the workflow already lives in argus. Otherwise ask which they want.

Pre-flight checks

Before any API call:

1. Daemon reachable. If the liveness probe in Context above is empty (no response on port 7743), tell the user the argus daemon does not appear to be running and stop. Do not attempt to start it from this skill. A 401 JSON body in the probe is the expected output and means the daemon is up.
2. Master token present. If ~/.argus/api-token is missing, tell the user to run argus once (the daemon mints the token on first run) and stop. The schedule endpoints are master-only — per-device tokens cannot manage schedules.
3. Read the token at call time, not in dynamic context. Use cat ~/.argus/api-token inside each curl invocation rather than echoing it into the conversation. The token is sensitive.

Verbs

Pick the verb from $ARGUMENTS. If unclear, ask which one.

list

curl -sS -H "Authorization: Bearer $(cat ~/.argus/api-token)" \
  http://localhost:7743/api/schedules | jq

Show the user a compact table: name, schedule, enabled, next_run_at, last_run_at, last_error (only if non-empty). Hide prompt unless the user asks — prompts can be long.

create

Required from the user (ask one question collecting any missing pieces, do not invent values):

• name — short, human-readable. Will be suffixed with the fire timestamp on each run.
• project — must match an existing argus project name from the projects list above. If the user gave a project that is not in the list, show the available names and stop.
• cadence — exactly one of:
  • schedule — cron expression for a recurring schedule. See the cron primer below.
  • run_once_at — RFC3339 UTC timestamp (e.g. 2026-05-17T14:00:00Z) for a single future run. Must be in the future. After firing, the row auto-disables — it stays in the list with enabled=false for inspection. The user can delete it once they have read the result.
• prompt — what the agent should do at each fire. Multi-line is fine; pass it as a JSON string.
• backend (optional) — overrides the default backend for this schedule. Only set if the user asked. Useful for forcing a cheaper model on a polling task.

Build the JSON body with jq to handle quoting of multi-line prompts safely:

# Recurring (cron):
JSON=$(jq -n \
  --arg name "$NAME" \
  --arg project "$PROJECT" \
  --arg schedule "$CRON" \
  --arg prompt "$PROMPT" \
  '{name:$name, project:$project, schedule:$schedule, prompt:$prompt, enabled:true}')

# One-shot:
JSON=$(jq -n \
  --arg name "$NAME" \
  --arg project "$PROJECT" \
  --arg run_once_at "$WHEN_RFC3339" \
  --arg prompt "$PROMPT" \
  '{name:$name, project:$project, run_once_at:$run_once_at, prompt:$prompt, enabled:true}')

curl -sS -X POST \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $(cat ~/.argus/api-token)" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d "$JSON" \
  http://localhost:7743/api/schedules | jq

When the user gives a local time, convert to UTC RFC3339 before constructing run_once_at. Echo the converted UTC timestamp back for confirmation before posting.

After the call, echo the returned id, next_run_at, and a one-line confirmation. Do not add --data-raw shortcuts that bypass jq — embedding raw user input into a shell-quoted JSON string is a quoting hazard.

update

The PUT body uses pointer fields: send only what the user wants to change.

JSON=$(jq -n --arg schedule "$NEW_CRON" '{schedule:$schedule}')
curl -sS -X PUT \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $(cat ~/.argus/api-token)" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d "$JSON" \
  http://localhost:7743/api/schedules/"$ID" | jq

If the user gave a name instead of an ID, list first, find the matching row, and confirm the ID with the user before sending the PUT.

run

Fires the schedule now, out of cycle. Creates a fresh task immediately.

curl -sS -X POST \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $(cat ~/.argus/api-token)" \
  http://localhost:7743/api/schedules/"$ID"/run | jq

Note for the user: the run-now path does NOT send a push notification (the cron tick path does). If they expected the notification, that is the reason it did not arrive.

enable / disable

Equivalent to update with only enabled set:

JSON=$(jq -n --argjson enabled false '{enabled:$enabled}')

(Use true for enable.) Disabling pauses fires but preserves the row. The user can re-enable later without re-creating.

Cron primer

Argus parses schedules with robfig/cron/v3 ParseStandard. Accepts:

• 5-field cron: minute hour day-of-month month day-of-week. Example: 0 9 * * 1-5 is 9am on weekdays.
• Descriptors: @hourly, @daily, @weekly, @monthly, @yearly.
• Interval shortcut: @every <duration> where duration is a Go duration like 30m, 1h, 24h. Example: @every 1h fires hourly aligned to the moment of creation.

Minimum resolution is one minute — schedules tighter than that are ignored. The first fire never happens on the very first tick after creation; the scheduler advances NextRunAt past now on each persist.

Time zone follows the daemon process's local time zone. State that explicitly to the user when the cron expression contains a specific clock time, so they can confirm it matches their expectation.

Validation

After every create or update, refetch the row and report next_run_at. If last_error is non-empty after a previous fire, surface it — the most common cause is a removed project or a mistyped cron expression.

Stop conditions

• Daemon unreachable on the health probe → tell the user, stop.
• Token missing → tell the user, stop.
• Project name not in the configured projects list → show available names, stop.
• Cron expression rejected by the API (HTTP 400) → show the API error verbatim, ask for a corrected expression, do not retry with a guessed value.
• HTTP 5xx from the API → show the response body, stop. Do not loop.

Do not retry destructive or fire-causing calls automatically. One attempt per user instruction.

Skill mirroring (author note)

This skill has a twin at ~/.dots/agents/skills/argus-schedule/SKILL.md per the user's skill-mirroring preference. The argus repo copy is canonical; the dotfiles copy makes the slash command reachable from any project. Keep the two files byte-identical.