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Core concepts

Collections, tasks, executions, integrations, and Dead Man’s Switch.

Collections

A collection is a folder of related HTTP jobs. Use collections to group work by product, environment, or team (for example Billing, Staging sync, Customer digests).

  • Create, archive, restore, and delete collections from Collections.
  • Opening a collection shows its tasks. All task create/edit/run flows start here.

Tasks

A task is one scheduled HTTP job. Each task has:

  • A target URL and HTTP config (method, headers, body, timeout, retries)
  • One or two cron expressions
  • Enable / disable (and archive) controls
  • Optional Dead Man’s Switch settings

There is no top-level Tasks route. Always open a collection first, then work with its tasks.

Schedules

CronFox uses standard five-field Unix cron: minute hour day-of-month month day-of-week.

  • Each task can have up to two expressions (for example weekday mornings and a monthly catch-up).
  • Your plan’s minimum cadence limits how often a schedule may fire (Starter: 60 minutes; Pro/Max: 1 minute).
  • Use CronGPT or the in-app helpers when you are unsure of the syntax. See Cron syntax.

Executions

An execution is one attempt to run a task (scheduled or Run now). CronFox stores status, timing, and outcome for as long as your plan’s history retention allows.

Common statuses include scheduled, running, completed, and failed. Full list: Execution statuses.

Integrations

Integrations are notification destinations: Email, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Telegram, Discord, and Webhook.

Important behavior:

  • CronFox fans out events to every enabled integration on your account.
  • Tasks are not bound to a single destination. Turn destinations on or off under Integrations, and control which events fire under Settings → Notifications.

Dead Man’s Switch

DMS is optional per task. When enabled:

  1. CronFox starts a run as usual.
  2. Your process must ping a unique URL within a grace period.
  3. If no ping arrives, the run is treated as missed and can trigger dms_missed_alerts.

Ping URL shape: https://ping.cronfox.com/{task_id}/{token}. Details: DMS overview.

How the pieces fit

Collection
  └── Task (URL + cron + optional DMS)
        └── Executions (history)
Integrations + notification preferences
  └── Alerts for started / success / failure / DMS missed

Start with a collection and one task, confirm executions look right, then add integrations and DMS.