Push Delivery

When to use push delivery

Use push if you already have a server listening or want jobs delivered to serverless functions. No long-lived worker process needed. Chronos makes the HTTP request to you.

If you’d rather pull jobs from your own process, see Worker Setup.

Create a schedule with push delivery

curl -X POST https://api.chronos.sh/v1/schedules \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer chrns_your_api_key" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "name": "Daily report",
    "handler": "generate-report",
    "cron": "0 9 * * *",
    "delivery": {
      "type": "push",
      "http": {
        "url": "https://your-app.com/hooks/chronos",
        "method": "POST"
      }
    },
    "payload": { "format": "pdf" }
  }'

The delivery.http object supports:

Field	Type	Required	Description
url	string	Yes	Your endpoint. Must be HTTPS in production. No private/localhost IPs.
method	string	Yes	GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, or DELETE
headers	Record<string, string>	No	Custom headers sent with every delivery

Custom headers example:

"http": {
  "url": "https://your-app.com/hooks/chronos",
  "method": "POST",
  "headers": {
    "X-App-Secret": "your-shared-secret"
  }
}

What Chronos sends

When a job is due, Chronos makes an HTTP request to your endpoint.

Request body

{
  "job_id": "a1b2c3d4-...",
  "handler": "generate-report",
  "execution_id": "e5f6g7h8-...",
  "scheduled_for": "2026-01-15T09:00:00.000Z",
  "attempt": 1,
  "payload": { "format": "pdf" }
}

Field	Type	Description
job_id	string	Stable job identifier. Same across retries.
handler	string | null	The handler name from your schedule. null if not set.
execution_id	string	Unique to this attempt. Use job_id for idempotency across retries.
scheduled_for	string	ISO 8601 timestamp of when the job was scheduled.
attempt	number	Attempt number. 1 on first try, increments on retries.
payload	object | null	The payload from your schedule or job.

Headers

Every delivery includes these system headers:

Header	Value	Description
Content-Type	application/json	Always JSON
User-Agent	chronos.sh/1.0	Identifies Chronos
X-Chronos-Signature	sha256=<hex>	HMAC-SHA256 signature for verification
X-Chronos-Delivery-Id	<execution_id>	Same as execution_id in the body
X-Chronos-Timestamp	<unix_seconds>	Request timestamp (seconds since epoch)

Your custom headers (from delivery.http.headers) are included but system headers take precedence on conflict.

Chronos does not follow redirects.

Handle the delivery

A minimal Express handler:

server.ts

import express from 'express';

const app = express();
app.use(express.json());

app.post('/hooks/chronos', async (req, res) => {
  const { handler, payload } = req.body;

  switch (handler) {
    case 'generate-report':
      await generateReport(payload.format);
      break;
    case 'sync-tenant':
      await syncTenant(payload.tenantId);
      break;
    default:
      console.warn(`Unknown handler: ${handler}`);
      return res.sendStatus(400);
  }

  res.sendStatus(200);
});

app.listen(3000);

Route by the handler field to dispatch different job types to a single endpoint. Returning 400 for unknown handlers prevents Chronos from recording work as completed when nothing ran. For handlers you expect to deploy soon, return 503 instead so Chronos retries.

Response rules

Your HTTP response tells Chronos what happened:

Your response	Chronos records	Retries?
2xx (any success)	completed	No
4xx (client error)	failed	No: terminal
5xx (server error)	failed	Yes: exponential backoff
Timeout (no response within limit)	timeout	Yes
Network error (connection refused, DNS failure)	failed	Yes

Caution

Return 5xx for transient failures you want retried. Return 4xx for permanent failures (bad payload, invalid state). 4xx is terminal, Chronos won’t retry. The response body is ignored. Only the status code matters.

Verify the signature

Every delivery is signed with your account’s signing secret (found in the dashboard under Settings → Signing Key). Verify the X-Chronos-Signature header to confirm requests come from Chronos and haven’t been tampered with.

See Signature Verification for a full implementation with timestamp freshness, key rotation, and Express raw body setup.

Caution

Verify against the raw request body (exact bytes received), not a re-serialized version. JSON key ordering must match exactly.

One-off jobs with push delivery

The same delivery config works on one-off jobs:

curl -X POST https://api.chronos.sh/v1/jobs \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer chrns_your_api_key" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "name": "Send welcome email",
    "handler": "send-email",
    "delay": { "value": 30, "unit": "minute" },
    "delivery": {
      "type": "push",
      "http": {
        "url": "https://your-app.com/hooks/chronos",
        "method": "POST"
      }
    },
    "payload": { "userId": "usr_abc123", "template": "welcome" }
  }'

Debugging tips

• Check your response time. Default timeout is 30 seconds. If your handler takes longer, increase timeout on the schedule/job or optimize the handler.
• 4xx is terminal. If you accidentally return 401/403 (e.g., middleware rejecting the request), Chronos won’t retry. Return 503 while you fix auth issues.
• Correlate with X-Chronos-Delivery-Id. This matches execution_id. Use it to find the delivery in your logs and in the Chronos dashboard.
• attempt tells you which retry you’re on. Use it to adjust behavior on later attempts (e.g., skip optional steps, use a simpler fallback).