Scheduling

Flow can run workflows on a recurring schedule, so you don't need external tools like cron, Task Scheduler, or a cloud-based scheduler. Just tell Flow how often to run, and it handles the rest.

Common use cases:

• Run a daily sales report every evening
• Check service health every 5 minutes
• Send a weekly summary every Monday morning
• Process a batch of records every hour

Starting a scheduled workflow

Human-readable schedules

Use --every with plain English to describe how often the workflow should run:

flow schedule my-report.flow --every "5 minutes"

Flow converts your description into a schedule and starts running. Press Ctrl+C to stop.

Cron expressions

If you prefer standard cron syntax, use --cron:

flow schedule my-report.flow --cron "*/5 * * * *"

The cron format is: minute hour day-of-month month day-of-week.

Schedule formats

The --every option understands these formats:

What you write	When it runs
"5 minutes"	Every 5 minutes
"30 minutes"	Every 30 minutes
"1 hour"	Every hour, on the hour
"2 hours"	Every 2 hours
"hour"	Every hour, on the hour
"day"	Once a day at midnight
"day at 9:00"	Once a day at 9:00 AM
"day at 18:00"	Once a day at 6:00 PM
"monday"	Every Monday at midnight
"monday at 9:00"	Every Monday at 9:00 AM
"friday at 17:30"	Every Friday at 5:30 PM

Day names can be full (monday, tuesday) or abbreviated (mon, tue). Everything is case-insensitive.

Options

Option	What it does	Example
--every <description>	Human-readable schedule	--every "5 minutes"
--cron <expression>	Standard cron expression	--cron "0 9 * * 1"
--input <json>	JSON data passed to each run	--input '{"region": "us-east"}'
--input-file <path>	Read input from a file	--input-file config.json
--mock	Use mock services	--mock
--verbose	Show detailed output for each run	--verbose
--output-log <dir>	Write a JSON log file for each run	--output-log ./logs/

You must provide either --every or --cron. If neither is given, Flow will show an error.

Logging

When you use --output-log, Flow writes a separate JSON log file for each execution, with a timestamp in the filename:

flow schedule my-report.flow --every "hour" --output-log ./logs/

This creates files like:

logs/
    2026-03-02T09-00-00-000Z.json
    2026-03-02T10-00-00-000Z.json
    2026-03-02T11-00-00-000Z.json

Each file contains the full execution result, outputs, and log entries — the same structured log format used by flow run --output-log.

Examples

Daily sales report

Aggregate sales data and send a Slack notification every day at 6 PM:

flow schedule examples/daily-sales-report.flow \
  --every "day at 18:00" \
  --verbose

Service health monitoring

Check if critical APIs are responding every 5 minutes:

flow schedule examples/sla-monitor.flow \
  --every "5 minutes" \
  --output-log ./logs/health/ \
  --verbose

Weekly report with cron

Run a report every Monday at 9 AM using cron syntax:

flow schedule my-report.flow --cron "0 9 * * 1" --verbose

Graceful shutdown

Press Ctrl+C (or send SIGTERM) to stop the scheduler cleanly. Flow will:

1. Stop scheduling new runs
2. Print how many runs completed
3. Exit with code 0

^C
Stopping scheduler...
Completed 12 runs.

Validation at startup

When you start a scheduled workflow, Flow validates the .flow file immediately — before the first run. If there are syntax errors or undefined services, you'll see the errors right away instead of discovering them on the first scheduled execution.

Next steps

• CLI Commands — All available commands and options
• Webhook Server — Serve workflows as HTTP endpoints
• Examples — See scheduling in action