Project Open to Alpha Team

Cron Job Health Audit + Consolidation — survey ops/cron, ship the consolidation, instrument the health surface

Audit the cron jobs in `ops/cron/` — every active job, every silently-failed job, every duplicate, every overlapping ownership. Identify the consolidation opportunities: jobs that could merge, jobs that should retire, ownership gaps that should be closed. Ship the consolidation. Instrument the cron health surface so future drift is visible.

Project Overview

Discipline

operations-builder · software-engineer-backend · ai-systems-associate

Duration

2 weeks

Compensation

Your stated freelance rate

Surface

Engineering · Cortex

Kernels

engineering · cortex

Outcomes

team-velocity · team-visible

Tier

Applied

Alpha Team

Open to alpha members who want to take this on

Tooling

Claude Code or Co-work

Why we want this done

Cortex and AIOS run dozens of cron jobs across ops/cron/. Some have known owners; some don't. Some have known cadence; some have drifted. The September-2026 incident pattern (cron silently stopping for days, local diverging from origin, regression manifesting as "why are we pulling old versions from GitHub") is documented in CLAUDE.md §5.2 rule 11. Operational hygiene at this scale requires deliberate stewardship — someone whose job is to look at the cron landscape with fresh eyes and ship the consolidation. The Operations Builder archetype is that hire. Eric Schiff is the only HIRE-NOW candidate currently; he's been stalled 31 days. The candidate proves they can absorb a complex operational landscape, identify real consolidation work (not theater), and ship the consolidation under bootstrapped-economics constraints.

Scope

Survey ops/cron/ — every cron file, KNOWN_CRON, Scheduler-Config.md, jobs.html
Audit each job — last successful run, last failed run, owner (named or unowned), cadence, registration completeness across the six surfaces (the /job skill's six-surface registration checklist)
Identify consolidation candidates — jobs that overlap, jobs that should retire, ownership gaps
Ship the consolidation via /job skill (guard-enforced) — every cron operation MUST route through /job
Instrument the cron health surface — extend the existing cortex-health.json or job-status.json data feeds; surface drift as a CEO-visible signal
Document the operating cadence — who reviews what when; what triggers alerts; what triggers a retirement decision
One-page debrief — what was found, what was consolidated, what the next quarter's audit cadence looks like

What success looks like

All cron jobs are accounted for — owner named or "unowned" flagged for CEO assignment
At least one consolidation ships during the trial — a duplicate retired, two jobs merged, an unowned job assigned, a stale job deprecated via /job retire mode
The cron health surface shows drift signals scannable in two seconds
Operating cadence is documented and calendared (review owner named, review cadence set)
The 24-hour archaeology ritual is applied to any near-miss or failure during the audit
The audit is honest — gaps and unknowns are flagged, not papered over

References

references.md

ops/cron/CLAUDE.md — cron architecture, registration discipline
/job skill (guard-enforced)
Cortex CLAUDE.md §5.2 rule 11 (sync-aios incident as canonical case study)
axioms/Engineering/Multi-Agent Physics (2026-04-18).md — deterministic gates over probabilistic discipline
Existing job-status.json, cortex-health.json data feeds
jobs.html dashboard surface as reference

Constraints

Claude Code as primary substrate
All cron operations MUST route through /job skill (guard-enforced) — manual cron file edits are blocked
The 24-hour archaeology ritual applies to any near-miss during the trial
The six-surface registration checklist is non-negotiable
IP separation: ops/cron application-layer jobs in scope; methodology paths (aios-methods/_tools/) are out of scope
The candidate may not retire a job they don't fully understand — when in doubt, flag for CEO review rather than retire

Apply

Read the Codex (10 min)

The operating principles we work by. If they resonate, the rest of this will land. Open the Codex →

12-minute video screen

Hireflix, async. Questions are calibrated to this project specifically.

Chemistry call (30-60 min)

Direct call with the CEO. Strategic alignment and mutual fit. No problem-solving exercise.

Project begins within 2-3 weeks

1099 contractor agreement, NDA, paid at your stated rate. Day 1 in Santa Monica.

Alpha Team members can take this project without the screen-and-call sequence. Reach out via the Alpha Team channel.

Apply for this trial Browse other projects

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