Set up Chronos with your agent

Coding agents such as Claude Code, Cursor, and Codex can set Chronos up in a project on their own. chronos.sh/llms.txt gives them the facts and an index of these docs, and llms-full.txt holds every page as plain text. The one thing an agent cannot do on the pull path is create an API key.

Prerequisites

• A Chronos account with the admin role (sign up free)
• A coding agent with shell access to the project
• Node.js 20 or later in the project

1. Create an API key

   In the dashboard, open Settings → API Keys and create a key. Export it in the shell the agent runs in:

   export CHRONOS_API_KEY=chrns_your_api_key

   Keep the key out of the prompt and out of the repository. The agent reads it from the environment.

2. Paste this prompt

   Set up Chronos (https://chronos.sh) in this project so one job runs through it end to end.
   
   Read https://chronos.sh/llms.txt first and follow the links you need. Create schedules and jobs over the REST API with curl or fetch. Use the Node SDK (@chronos.sh/sdk) only for the pull worker.
   
   The API key is in the CHRONOS_API_KEY environment variable. Never print it, hardcode it, or commit it.
   
   Use pull delivery: add a worker with one handler, start it as a background process, then create a one-off job for that handler. Confirm through the API that the job's execution reached "completed". Finish by telling me the one command that starts the worker again from a clean shell.

3. Check the result

   The job and its execution appear in the dashboard under Jobs. The agent should also report the execution status it read from GET /v1/executions?job_id=....

What to expect

• A one-off job runs as soon as the worker claims it, so the whole setup takes a few minutes.
• If the agent creates a recurring schedule instead, an interval schedule first runs one interval after creation (at least 10 minutes on the Free plan) and a cron schedule at its next matching time.
• Push delivery is a second option when the project already serves HTTP. Verifying push signatures needs your signing secret, which an API key cannot read, so you hand the agent that secret as well. See Push Delivery.

Note

An agent follows the docs literally. If one gets stuck on a Chronos step, email [email protected] with the error it hit and the page it was reading.

Next steps

Worker Setup Prod config: graceful shutdown, multiple handlers, error handling

Scheduling Patterns Cron and interval patterns for recurring schedules

REST API Full endpoint documentation