CronFu

Getting Started with CronFu in 5 Minutes

By CronFu Team

This guide walks you through setting up CronFu to monitor your cron jobs. By the end, you'll have a working monitor with alerts.

Step 1: Sign Up

Head to app.cronfu.dev/signup and create your account. No credit card required for the free tier.

Step 2: Get Your Telemetry Key

Once logged in, go to Settings → API Keys and copy your telemetry key. It looks like cfu_tel_abc123....

Step 3: Wrap Your Cron Job

The simplest integration is adding curl calls to your crontab:

# Before
0 2 * * * /usr/local/bin/backup.sh

# After
0 2 * * * curl -fsS "ping.cronfu.dev/p/YOUR_KEY/nightly-backup?state=run" && /usr/local/bin/backup.sh && curl -fsS "ping.cronfu.dev/p/YOUR_KEY/nightly-backup?state=complete" || curl -fsS "ping.cronfu.dev/p/YOUR_KEY/nightly-backup?state=fail"

CronFu auto-creates the monitor on the first ping — no dashboard setup needed.

Step 4: Set Up Alerts

Go to Notification Lists in the dashboard and create a list with your preferred channels:

  • Email — Built-in, no setup required
  • Slack — Paste a webhook URL
  • Discord — Paste a webhook URL
  • Custom webhook — Any HTTP endpoint

Then assign the notification list to your monitor.

Step 5: Verify It Works

Trigger your cron job manually or wait for its next scheduled run. You should see:

  1. A new monitor appear in your dashboard
  2. Run/complete events logged in the timeline
  3. Duration tracking start automatically

If the job fails, you'll get an alert within seconds.

Using the CLI (Optional)

The CronFu CLI can auto-discover every cron job on a server, wrap jobs with monitoring, and check status from your terminal:

curl -fsSL https://cronfu.dev/install | bash
cronfu configure --setup
cronfu discover     # Scans all crontabs, cron.d, and systemd timers
cronfu sync         # Registers all found jobs at once
cronfu exec backup  # Wraps a job with run/complete/fail pings + log capture
cronfu status       # Check monitor health from the terminal

Next Steps

  • SLOs — Set uptime and success rate targets from your monitor's settings
  • Escalation policies — Route alerts to the right team via Settings → Alerts
  • Explore the API — Automate monitor management

Go to your dashboard →