Monitor a GitHub Actions scheduled workflow

GitHub silently disables scheduled workflows on inactive repos and skips runs under load. A dead-man's-switch catches it.

A check has a ping URL. Your job calls it on every successful run. If a ping is late past the grace period, CronCanary alerts you. Copy your check's exact URL from its detail page — examples below use $URL.

Add a ping step

Store your check URL as a repo secret (CRONCANARY_URL), then ping at the end of the job:

name: nightly
on:
  schedule:
    - cron: "0 4 * * *"
jobs:
  run:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - run: ./scripts/nightly.sh
      # ping only if all previous steps succeeded
      - run: curl -fsS "$CRONCANARY_URL"
        env:
          CRONCANARY_URL: ${{ secrets.CRONCANARY_URL }}

Report failures too

      - name: report failure
        if: failure()
        run: curl -fsS "${{ secrets.CRONCANARY_URL }}/fail"

Tip: set the check's grace generously — GitHub's scheduled runs can be delayed several minutes under load.

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