Scheduling and Cron-Based Agents
APScheduler, cron jobs, and time-triggered autonomous agent execution.
Why Schedule Agents?
Some agent tasks do not need to run continuously or on-demand — they run on a schedule. Daily reports, weekly summaries, hourly data checks, and periodic cleanups are all good candidates for scheduled agents.
APScheduler Basics
APScheduler (Advanced Python Scheduler) runs jobs inside your Python process. It supports three trigger types: date (once), interval (repeating), and cron (calendar-based).
from apscheduler.schedulers.blocking import BlockingScheduler
from apscheduler.schedulers.background import BackgroundScheduler
from datetime import datetime
# BlockingScheduler: takes over the main thread
# BackgroundScheduler: runs in background thread
scheduler = BackgroundScheduler()
def my_agent_job():
print(f'Agent running at {datetime.now()}')
# Add a simple interval job
scheduler.add_job(my_agent_job, 'interval', minutes=5)
scheduler.start()
print('Scheduler started in background')
# Your app continues running here
import time
time.sleep(15)
scheduler.shutdown()
print('Scheduler stopped')All lessons in this course
- Trigger-Action Agent Patterns
- Connecting Agents to Webhooks
- Scheduling and Cron-Based Agents
- Building a Multi-App Automation Pipeline