Cron Jobs

Cron jobs are scheduled HTTP requests that Vercel fires on a timetable. DirectoryLaunch ships with two.

What's scheduled

"crons": [
  { "path": "/api/cron/competitions",     "schedule": "15 8 * * *" },
  { "path": "/api/cron/winner-reminders", "schedule": "0 9 * * *" }
]

Both paths are regular Next.js API routes under app/api/cron/. You can run them manually with curl — useful for testing.

How cron URLs are protected

Anyone on the internet could hit https://your-site.com/api/cron/competitions otherwise. To prevent that, every cron endpoint checks this header:

Authorization: Bearer ${CRON_SECRET}

Vercel automatically adds the header when it calls your cron endpoints, using the CRON_SECRET env var. If CRON_SECRET is missing or wrong → the endpoint returns 401 Unauthorized.

Generating a good CRON_SECRET

openssl rand -hex 32

Paste that into both .env.local and Vercel → Settings → Environment Variables.

Vercel plan limits

If you're on Hobby, the default config will hit the limit. Either:

• Keep one cron and disable the other
• Upgrade to Pro

Reading cron schedules

The format is standard Unix cron: min hour day month weekday. Examples:

Use crontab.guru to sanity-check.

Adding a new cron job

Fastest path — hand the whole job to AI:

Or do it by hand:

1. Create the endpoint

import { NextRequest } from 'next/server';
 
export async function GET(req: NextRequest) {
  // Verify the request is from Vercel cron
  const auth = req.headers.get('authorization');
  if (auth !== `Bearer ${process.env.CRON_SECRET}`) {
    return Response.json({ error: 'Unauthorized' }, { status: 401 });
  }
 
  // Do your work
  // ...
 
  return Response.json({ ok: true });
}

2. Register the schedule

Edit vercel.json:

"crons": [
  { "path": "/api/cron/my-task", "schedule": "0 */6 * * *" }
]

3. Deploy

Vercel reads vercel.json on deploy and wires the schedule. Changes to schedules require a redeploy.

Testing locally

Manually hit your endpoint with the secret:

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $CRON_SECRET" \
  http://localhost:3000/api/cron/competitions

It should return { "ok": true } (or whatever your handler returns).

Monitoring

Vercel Settings → Cron Jobs shows each cron's last run status and logs. Failures appear in your project's Logs tab with a cron- prefix.