- name
- cron-cost-guard
- description
- Audit AI agent cron jobs for token cost risks, model-switch loops, and session isolation failures. Use when setting up new cron jobs, debugging unexpected token usage spikes, auditing multi-agent cron configurations, or after a cost anomaly. Triggers on "audit crons", "check cron costs", "token budget", "cron safety", "cost spike", "model switch error", "session isolation", "cron health check".
Cron Cost Guard
Prevent silent token budget burns from misconfigured AI agent cron jobs.
Quick Audit
Run this checklist on every cron setup or when investigating a cost spike:
1. Session Isolation (Critical)
Check every cron job for session binding conflicts:
cron list (includeDisabled: true)Red flags:
sessionKey: "agent:main:main"withsessionTarget: "isolated"→ stale binding, will cause model conflictsagentIdpointing to a different agent than the session owner → cross-agent model contaminationconsecutiveErrors >= 3→ likely stuck in a retry looplastErrorcontainingLiveSessionModelSwitchError→ model-switch loop confirmed
Fix: Remove and recreate the job without sessionKey. Set sessionTarget: "isolated".
2. Model Conflicts
In multi-agent setups (e.g., Agent A on Claude, Agent B on GPT), each agent's crons must be scoped to that agent only.
- Set
agentIdexplicitly on every cron job - Set
modelexplicitly in the payload when available - Never let Agent B's cron inherit Agent A's session model
3. System Prompt Size
Audit injected workspace files:
wc -c MEMORY.md SOUL.md AGENTS.md TOOLS.md USER.md QUEUE.mdTarget: < 20KB total injected. Move large files (playbooks, heartbeat templates, reference docs) to references/ for on-demand reading.
| Size | Status |
|---|---|
| < 20KB | Healthy |
| 20-40KB | Trim soon |
| > 40KB | Trim now — every API call is bloated |
4. Cost Monitoring
sessions_list (limit: 10, messageLimit: 1)Look for sessions with high estimatedCostUsd but low output tokens — that's a retry loop signature.
| Metric | Healthy | Warning | Critical |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cron consecutive errors | 0 | 1-2 | ≥3 |
| Session cost (cron) | < $0.50 | $0.50-2.00 | > $2.00 |
| Model switch retries | 0 | 1-2 | ≥3 |
Diagnosis: Token Spike
For detailed diagnosis steps and post-incident checklist, read references/diagnosis.md.
Prevention Rules
- Every cron job:
sessionTarget: "isolated", no stalesessionKey - Every cron job: explicit
timeoutSeconds(never unlimited) - Multi-agent: explicit
agentIdmatching the agent that should run it - After changing default model: audit all cron jobs for conflicts
- Weekly: check
consecutiveErrorsacross all jobs — anything ≥ 3 needs investigation