Cron Validate

workflow.cron_validate

ProductionBounded custom (Class B)Deterministicstrictfastv1.0.0

No network

Overview

You send one cron expression and a required dialect: UNIX_5, QUARTZ_6_7, SPRING_6 or AWS_EVENTBRIDGE. There is no AUTO. A valid expression comes back with normalized fields and an English description; an invalid one is a successful answer with valid false and diagnostics, not a guess in another dialect. This does not schedule jobs or parse natural language. A successful call costs 1 execution credit.

Callers need a published dialect, not an engine that guesses UNIX versus Quartz.

Reliability

Powered by pinned cron-utils 9.2.1. Invalid expressions return valid false. CRON_LIMIT_EXCEEDED — trigger: expression longer than 1024 characters; retryable: no; next: shorten it.

Context footprint

Returns fields and a short English description, never a schedule dump. A successful call costs 1 execution credit.

When to use it

When one cron string must be accepted or rejected in a named dialect.

When you need next-run instants, timezone resolution, or job execution.

Scope

Note

Parses one cron expression in a caller-declared dialect with no AUTO fallback.

Non-goals

Does not run or schedule jobs
Does not parse natural-language schedules
Does not accept Kubernetes or GitHub macros unless they are valid in the dialect

Properties

IdempotentRetry safeStreaming supportedFile input supportedRequires external service

Capabilities

validation

Cost & billing

Flat rate per invocation

MetercallsBillable onsuccessCost per call1 credit

File handling

Accepts file_refProduces file_refMax input64 KB

How we handle your data

Sensitive input, safe output

What this means

This skill may receive sensitive content, but it does not target sensitive data and returns only a structured non-sensitive result.

Squillify guarantees

Runs inside Squillify
This skill runs inside Squillify.
Payloads are not sent to an external service by this skill.
Squillify does not permanently store submitted payloads.
Telemetry records metadata only, not submitted content.
Submitted payloads are not used for training.
Submitted payloads are not reviewed by humans.
This skill does not target sensitive data.
The response does not contain submitted content.

Your responsibility

Squillify does not determine whether submitted content is sensitive. Your application is responsible for deciding what data it is allowed to submit. Your application is responsible for securing the response.

Read the Microskill Data Handling Policy

Input schema

Field	Type	Required	Description
expression	string	Yes	Cron text, 1 through 1025 characters; runtime accepts at most 1024.
dialect	string	Yes	UNIX_5, QUARTZ_6_7, SPRING_6 or AWS_EVENTBRIDGE. There is no AUTO.

Output schema

Field	Type	Required	Description
valid	boolean	Yes	True when the expression parsed in the declared dialect.
dialect	string	Yes	Dialect that was actually applied to this expression.
normalized	string	Yes	Engine canonical form, or the trimmed input when parsing failed.
fields	object	Yes	Named cron fields present in this dialect as string values — unconstrained RFC 8259 JSON items are not used; keys are field names.
description	string	Yes	English semantic description from cron-utils; empty when valid is false.
warnings	array	Yes	Rare-schedule warnings in a stable order, 0 through 16 strings.
diagnostics	array	Yes	Parse diagnostics when valid is false, 0 through 16 closed {code, message} objects.

API contract

POST /v1/execute

curl

curl -sS -X POST "$BASE/v1/execute" -H "Authorization: Bearer $KEY" -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '{"skillKey":"workflow.cron_validate","input":{"expression":"0 12 * * *","dialect":"UNIX_5"}}'

Integrations

TypeScript SDK

import { Squillify } from "@squillify/sdk";

const sq = new Squillify({ apiKey: process.env.SQUILLIFY_API_KEY });

const { output } = await sq.execute("workflow.cron_validate", {"dialect":"UNIX_5","expression":"0 12 * * *"});

Errors

Code	HTTP	Retryable	Description
VALIDATION_ERROR	400	No	The request payload failed schema validation.
UNAUTHORIZED	401	No	Missing or invalid API key.
SKILL_NOT_ACCESSIBLE	403	No	The API key is not granted access to this skill.
SKILL_NOT_AVAILABLE_FOR_PLAN	403	No	This skill is not included in your current plan.
PLAN_ELIGIBILITY_UNAVAILABLE	503	Yes	Plan eligibility could not be decided. Retry after backoff.
SKILL_NOT_FOUND	404	No	The requested skill or version does not exist.
TENANT_RATE_LIMITED	429	Yes	Request rate limit exceeded. Retry after backoff.
QUOTA_EXCEEDED	429	Yes	Plan quota exhausted. Retryable once the quota period resets.
EXECUTION_TIMEOUT	504	Yes	Execution exceeded the allowed time budget.
CRON_LIMIT_EXCEEDED	429	No	A size, quota, rate, or time limit was exceeded.

Other limits

Limit	Value
Recommended inline bytes	32 KiB

Limitations

Does not run or schedule jobs
Does not parse natural-language schedules
Does not accept Kubernetes or GitHub macros unless they are valid in the dialect
Choosing a timezone
Enumerating next runs

How to call

POST /v1/execute (requires authentication)

Request bodyjson

{
  "skillKey": "workflow.cron_validate",
  "input": {
    "dialect": "UNIX_5",
    "expression": "0 12 * * *"
  }
}

Examples

A five-field UNIX expression that fires every day at noon

Inputjson

{
  "dialect": "UNIX_5",
  "expression": "0 12 * * *"
}

Expected outputjson

{
  "fields": {
    "dayOfWeek": "*",
    "hour": "12",
    "dayOfMonth": "*",
    "month": "*",
    "minute": "0"
  },
  "dialect": "UNIX_5",
  "valid": true,
  "normalized": "0 12 * * *",
  "diagnostics": [],
  "description": "at 12:00",
  "warnings": []
}

Tip

UNIX_5 accepts five fields; noon is minute 0 hour 12.

A Quartz six-field expression is invalid under UNIX_5