schedls is a CLI tool for inspecting and managing cron jobs and systemd timers through one transparent interface. It is a management and inspection layer over the operating system's native schedulers — it is not a daemon, not a queue, and not a replacement scheduler.

$ schedls
NAME              SCHEDULE             NEXT              BACKEND  SCOPE   STATUS
backup            daily at 02:00       tomorrow 02:00    systemd  user    waiting
cleanup           0 4 * * 0            Sun 04:00         cron     user    active
logrotate         daily                —                 systemd  system  waiting

If you uninstall schedls, everything it created keeps working: a timer is an ordinary systemd unit, and a cron job is an ordinary crontab entry.

Install

From the package repository

Native .deb and .rpm packages are published in the shared SysMD package repository.

Debian / Ubuntu

sudo mkdir -p /usr/share/keyrings
curl -fsSL https://repo.sysmd.uk/sysmd/sysmd.gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/sysmd.gpg

echo "deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/sysmd.gpg] https://repo.sysmd.uk/sysmd/debian stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/sysmd.list

sudo apt update
sudo apt install schedls

The signing key fingerprint is 0032C71FA6A11EF9567D4434C5C06BD4603C28B1.

Fedora / RHEL

sudo rpm --import https://repo.sysmd.uk/sysmd/sysmd.gpg

sudo tee /etc/yum.repos.d/sysmd.repo > /dev/null << 'EOF'
[sysmd]
name=SysMD Repository
baseurl=https://repo.sysmd.uk/sysmd/rpm/$basearch
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
repo_gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=https://repo.sysmd.uk/sysmd/sysmd.gpg
EOF

sudo dnf upgrade --refresh
sudo dnf install schedls

From PyPI

$ pipx install schedls
# or
$ pip install --user schedls

python -m schedls works too. Python 3.11+.

Bash completion

Enable opt-in completion for the current Bash session:

eval "$(register-python-argcomplete schedls)"

Add that line to your shell profile to enable it in future sessions.

Examples

Discover everything visible to you:

$ schedls
$ schedls --system
$ schedls --backend cron

Explore a native calendar expression without creating anything:

$ schedls calendar 'Mon..Fri 02:30'
$ schedls calendar --next 10 --utc daily

Create a user systemd timer:

$ schedls new backup --timer --daily 02:00 --persistent -- /usr/local/bin/backup /srv/data

Create a cron job:

$ schedls new cleanup --cron --cron-expr '0 4 * * 0' -- /usr/local/bin/cleanup
$ schedls new backup --cron --daily 02:00 --env TZ=UTC -- /usr/local/bin/backup

Cron --env values apply only to that managed job; they are scheduler configuration rather than secret storage. Managed cron jobs can also be enabled or disabled without deleting their saved schedule.

Create a system cron drop-in as root (runs as root unless --run-as is given):

$ sudo schedls new updates --cron --system --daily 03:00 -- /usr/local/bin/updates

Prefer to be guided? Add -i/--interactive to new or edit and any omitted field is prompted for. Flags you do pass become pre-filled defaults:

$ schedls new backup -i
$ schedls edit backup -i

For new, the wizard asks for the scope (user or system) unless --user or --system was given; a system cron job then asks which user it should run as (default root). Interactive mode is line-based (no external editor or pager), requires a terminal, and cannot be combined with --json. The collected values are shown in the usual preview and still require confirmation before anything is written.

Inspect, change, disable, remove:

$ schedls show backup
$ schedls edit backup --daily 03:00
$ schedls disable backup
$ schedls rm backup
$ schedls logs backup

Check what this host can do:

$ schedls doctor

Every mutating command supports --dry-run, and --yes for scripts. Machine output is available with --json.

Design promises

schedls does not:

run a background daemon;
listen on a network port;
make network requests;
automatically invoke sudo;
execute discovered scheduled commands;
open an editor or pager while managing jobs;
use a shell internally for helper commands;
modify unmanaged schedules by default.

See SECURITY.md and docs/security-model.md.

Documentation

docs/cli.md — every command, option and exit code
docs/architecture.md
docs/security-model.md
docs/systemd.md
docs/cron.md

Development

$ poetry install
$ poetry run pre-commit install      # check hooks on every commit
$ poetry run pre-commit run --all-files
$ poetry run pytest
$ poetry run mypy

Formatting and linting use ruff; security scanning uses Bandit; both run through pre-commit alongside trailing-whitespace, end-of-file, YAML and TOML checks. CI runs on pull requests, applying the same hooks and a strict type check on Python 3.13, a pip-audit dependency audit, and the test suite on Python 3.11 and 3.13. Dependency security updates are handled centrally by Renovate. Build distributions locally with poetry build.

Support

If you find schedls useful, consider supporting its development: