# Scheduled jobs
URL: https://openship.io/docs/guides/jobs.md

Run maintenance on a schedule — the built-in system jobs Openship manages for you, plus your own scheduled commands.

Jobs are tasks that run on a **schedule** on your instance: the maintenance
Openship does for you automatically, and any commands you want to run yourself.
Find them in the dashboard under **Jobs**.

<Callout title="Self-hosted only" type="info">
Jobs live on a self-hosted instance. On Openship Cloud the platform handles this
maintenance for you, so there's no Jobs tab.
</Callout>

Every run is recorded — when it last ran, whether it succeeded, how long it took,
and its output.

## Built-in jobs

Openship ships a set of system jobs and keeps them running for you — nothing to
set up:

| Job | What it does | Default schedule |
|---|---|---|
| SSL certificate renewal | Renews Let's Encrypt certificates before they expire | daily |
| Orphaned resource cleanup | Reclaims leftovers from a failed teardown | hourly |
| Backup retention prune | Deletes backups past their retention window | daily |
| Audit log prune | Trims old audit entries per your retention setting | daily |
| Deployment reconcile | Settles deploys interrupted by a connection blip | every 10 min |

For any of them you can **change the schedule**, **enable/disable** it,
**Run now**, and see its **run history**. You can't delete a built-in job (it's
part of Openship) — disable it instead.

## Your own jobs

Need a nightly database dump, a cache warm, or a cleanup script? Create a custom
job:

1. In **Jobs**, click **New job**.
2. Give it a **name**, pick the **server** it runs on, enter the **command**, and
   a **schedule** (cron).
3. Save. It runs on that schedule, and you can **Run now** any time.

While a job runs you can watch its **live output**, and every run is kept in
history with its result.

## Schedules (cron), in plain terms

A schedule is a standard 5-field cron string:

```
┌───────── minute (0–59)
│ ┌─────── hour (0–23)
│ │ ┌───── day of month (1–31)
│ │ │ ┌─── month (1–12)
│ │ │ │ ┌─ day of week (0–6, Sun=0)
* * * * *
```

| Cron | When |
|---|---|
| `0 3 * * *` | every day at 03:00 |
| `*/15 * * * *` | every 15 minutes |
| `0 * * * *` | every hour, on the hour |
| `0 2 * * 0` | every Sunday at 02:00 |
| `30 4 1 * *` | 04:30 on the 1st of each month |

Openship validates the cron when you save and shows the **next run time**.

<Callout title="Run now is recorded too">
Triggering a job manually with **Run now** is saved in history just like a
scheduled run, marked as manual — so you always have a full record.
</Callout>