Quick Start

1. Create an account

2. Create a monitor

After signing in, click New Monitor and configure:

Name: A descriptive name like "nightly-backup" or "sync-orders"
Schedule: A cron expression like 0 2 * * * (every day at 2 AM UTC)
Grace period: How long to wait before flagging a job as missing (e.g. 5 minutes)

3. Save your ingestion token

After creating the monitor, you'll see your ingestion token. Save it — it won't be shown again.

4. Add a check-in to your cron job

The simplest integration is a curl call at the end of your crontab entry:

0 2 * * * /path/to/backup.sh && curl -fsS -X POST https://cronbeacon.dev/api/v1/ingestion/check-in -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN"

This sends a success check-in whenever your job completes.

5. Report outcomes and metadata (optional)

Send structured data with your check-in:

curl -X POST https://cronbeacon.dev/api/v1/ingestion/check-in \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"outcome": "SUCCESS", "metadata": {"duration_ms": 1234, "records_processed": 500}}'

If your job fails, report it:

curl -X POST https://cronbeacon.dev/api/v1/ingestion/check-in \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"outcome": "FAILURE", "metadata": {"error": "Connection refused"}}'

What happens next

If your job checks in on time — the monitor shows UP
If your job reports a failure — CronBeacon opens an incident (DOWN — Failed)
If your job never checks in — CronBeacon opens an incident after the grace period (DOWN — Missing)
When the job starts reporting again — the incident resolves automatically