hyperhive/docs/swarm/schedules.md

# Scheduled prompts

A scheduled prompt hands one or more agents the same text at set times: once,
or every interval from a start time. Each prompt has a name, its title. The
swarm keeps every prompt, and each agent it names fires it in its own
container, so a fire needs neither the hive nor the swarm controller to be up
at that moment, only the agent.

Operators manage them with `swarmctl schedule` on the swarm controller's
host. Agents can't create, change or remove one. For a one-off wake an agent
sets itself, it uses `remind`, which stays inside its container.

## Managing them

```console
# swarmctl schedule add --name standup --agent scribe --agent iris \
    --body "post the standup summary" --at 2026-10-05T09:00:00+02:00 --every 1d
added schedule kqzpmwab
kqzpmwab  "standup"  every 1d  from 2026-10-05T07:00:00Z  next 2026-10-05T07:00:00Z  agents: iris, scribe  | post the standup summary

# swarmctl schedule list
# swarmctl schedule list --agent scribe
# swarmctl schedule edit kqzpmwab --body "post the standup summary to the team room"
# swarmctl schedule edit kqzpmwab --add-agent atlas --remove-agent iris
# swarmctl schedule pause kqzpmwab
# swarmctl schedule resume kqzpmwab
# swarmctl schedule rm kqzpmwab
```

- `--agent` names an agent to fire the prompt in; repeat it for more. Each
  must be an agent some hive's wanted state declares.
- `--at` takes an RFC 3339 time with its offset, or unix seconds. Without it
  the first fire is now. A time in the past fires its latest past time once,
  as soon as each agent reads the prompt.
- `--every` takes a count and a unit, `s`, `m`, `h` or `d`. Without it the
  prompt fires once.
- `schedule edit` changes only the flags you pass and keeps the id. `--once`
  turns a recurring prompt into a one-shot. `--add-agent` and
  `--remove-agent` change who gets it; removing the last agent fails, so
  remove the prompt instead.
- `schedule list` shows one row per prompt: id, name, cadence, start, next
  fire time, agents, and the first line of the body.

The full flag reference is [`swarmctl-cli.md`](../tools/swarmctl-cli.md).

## When a prompt fires

A prompt's fire times are its start time plus whole intervals. Each agent
works them out from the prompt itself, so:

- **Editing the text or the name doesn't move them.** Neither does changing
  the agents. Only a new `--at` or `--every` does.
- **An agent that was down or disconnected fires once.** When it's back, it
  fires the latest time it missed and then carries on at the next one. The
  earlier missed times don't fire.
- **A restart refires nothing.** Each agent records the last time it fired
  for each prompt in its state database, and fires a time only when it's
  later than that. An agent removed from a prompt and added back keeps that
  record, so it doesn't refire a time it already fired.
- **A one-shot fires once**, even though it stays in `schedule list` until
  you remove it. Moving its `--at` to a later time fires it again then.
- **A paused prompt doesn't fire**, and the times that pass while it's paused
  don't fire when it resumes. An agent marks those times as passed while it
  watches the paused prompt; if the agent was down for the whole pause, it
  fires the latest time it missed once, as above.

A fire reaches the agent as a `schedule` loose end with the prompt's text.
The agent's turn loop wakes for it like any other loose end. If the agent
hasn't dealt with the previous fire yet, the new fire replaces it rather
than adding a second one; once the agent dismissed the previous one, the
next fire opens a new one.

Each agent reads its prompts every 10 seconds, so a fire can land up to 10
seconds after its time. A change reaches each agent within the same window,
or within a minute if the controller's first attempt to pass it on failed.

## When a prompt doesn't fire

- **The agent isn't connected to the swarm queue.** It reads its prompts with
  its own swarm-queue credential. A harness that can't connect retries for
  about five minutes, then exits and restarts 30 seconds later; it reads no
  prompts until a connect succeeds. See
  [Giving the agents the queue too](README.md#giving-the-agents-the-queue-too).
- **The agent hasn't read its prompts since it started.** It fires from the
  last list it read; until the first read succeeds it fires nothing. A read
  that fails later keeps the previous list.

<details><summary>Implementation</summary>

swarm-controller is the only client that writes either of the two KV buckets
involved.

`schedule-definitions` holds every prompt as one JSON document under the key
`all`. Agents hold no grant on this bucket. Each change re-reads the key and
writes against its revision, so a prompt exists for every one of its agents or for
none of them, and two changes at once don't lose one.

`agent-schedules` holds one key per agent: the prompts naming that agent,
without their names or other agents.

```json
{
  "schedules": [
    {
      "id": "kqzpmwab",
      "body": "post the standup summary",
      "anchor_unix": 1791183600,
      "interval_seconds": 86400,
      "paused": false
    }
  ]
}
```

`interval_seconds` is absent for a one-shot. After each change the controller
rewrites the key of every agent the change named before or after, and once a
minute it rewrites every agent's key, so a rewrite that failed converges. Ids
are 8 lowercase letters, the same in every agent's key, never reused, and so
never equal to a hive schedule's numeric id.

`swarmctl schedule` calls these routes over the controller's socket:

| method   | path                  | body                                                                                                                      |
| -------- | --------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `GET`    | `/api/schedules`      | —; answers every prompt, sorted by name then id                                                                           |
| `POST`   | `/api/schedules`      | `name`, `agents`, `body`, and optional `anchor_unix`, `interval_seconds`, `paused`; answers 201 with the prompt           |
| `PATCH`  | `/api/schedules/<id>` | any of `name`, `body`, `anchor_unix`, `interval_seconds` (`null` for a one-shot), `paused`, `add_agents`, `remove_agents` |
| `DELETE` | `/api/schedules/<id>` | —; answers 204                                                                                                            |

Each prompt they answer with has `id`, `name`, `agents` (sorted), `body`,
`anchor_unix`, `interval_seconds` (`null` for a one-shot), `paused`, and
`next_fire_unix`: the next time on the prompt's grid, as of the moment the
controller answers, `null` when paused or a one-shot whose time has passed.

An agent's own queue credential grants exactly one subject in the swarm's
JetStream: `$JS.API.DIRECT.GET.KV_agent-schedules.$KV.agent-schedules.<agent>`,
the direct read of its own key. It can't read another agent's key, open or
watch the bucket, or write to it. A KV watch would need a consumer, and a
consumer create subject doesn't name a key, so granting one would let the
agent read every key; the agent reads its key every 10 seconds instead.

The harness (`hive-agent`'s `schedule_timer`) keeps the last fired time per
prompt id in the `schedule_fired_slots` table of its state database, and
pushes each fire as the todo `schedule`/`schedule:<id>` with source
`scheduled`, reopening an acknowledged one.

</details>