Crontab edit

Skill cmflynn/crontab-edit/skills/crontab-edit

Edit, install, replace, or restore a user crontab from the command line without silently wiping it. Use whenever the task touches `crontab` — "restore my crontab", "install this crontab", "add a cron job", or editing a crontab backup file.From its SKILL.md

Install

npx -y skills add cmflynn/crontab-edit --skill crontab-edit

Assembled from the repository path, not quoted from the project. Check it against their README if it does not work.

2 things to look at

26 days oldThe repository was created 26 days ago. New is not bad, but a brand new repository carrying a familiar-sounding name is the shape a typosquat arrives in, and there has been no time for anyone else to find a problem with it.
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SKILL.md

1.4 KB, 303 tokens by cl100k_base, as published. Nobody here has run it

Safe crontab editing

crontab overwrites the entire table at once. The crontab <file> form can also silently no-op (exit 0, nothing written) under some sandboxed/restricted shells. Works the same on Linux and macOS. Two rules prevent lost jobs.

1. Back up first

crontab -l > /tmp/crontab.backup.txt 2>/dev/null || echo "(no existing crontab)"

An empty/nonzero result just means the table is empty — that's fine.

2. Install via stdin, then verify by reading back

Pipe the content in on stdin — portable and reliable everywhere. Avoid crontab <file>, and do not trust the exit code; only the read-back proves it worked.

crontab - < /path/to/new_crontab.txt        # install (NOT: crontab file)
crontab -l | wc -l                           # verify: line count matches source
crontab -l                                   # verify: jobs are what you expect

If the read-back is empty or the count is wrong, the install failed — retry the stdin form.

To edit in place without clobbering the rest, round-trip it: crontab -l to a file, edit that file, then reinstall via stdin.

What ships with it

Read from the repository

Just SKILL.md. No reference files, no scripts.