Adapted community discussion: Translated, paraphrased, and condensed from an anonymized public OpenClaw Discord support conversation from August 2026. Technical guidance was reviewed for OpenClaw 2026.9.3.
My cron job or scheduled automation fails intermittently. Are there a few reliable checks that separate a scheduler problem from a failed agent run or missing delivery?
Yes. Preserve the existing job and inspect its evidence before recreating it:
openclaw --version
openclaw gateway status
openclaw automations status
openclaw automations list --all
openclaw automations get JOB_ID
openclaw automations runs JOB_ID --limit 20
openclaw logs --follow
Automations run through the Gateway, so a stopped Gateway prevents scheduled execution. Then check whether the job is enabled, whether its next run matches the intended timezone, and whether history shows no run, a skipped run, an execution failure, or successful execution with failed delivery.
A cron expression without --tz uses the Gateway host timezone. A timestamp without a timezone is interpreted as UTC. Top-of-hour recurring jobs may also be staggered unless exact timing was selected.
Share only the job ID, sanitized timestamps, and the relevant run status. Redact prompts, delivery targets, credentials, and message content.