Cron & Scripting

Prerequisites

• API key login (cron jobs are non-interactive — OAuth won't work)

Use an API key in cron

# Either store via betterness auth login --key bk_..., or pass per-call:
0 6 * * * betterness workflow daily-brief --json --api-key bk_your_key > /tmp/brief.json

Daily brief at 6 AM, posted to a webhook

# crontab -e
0 6 * * * betterness workflow daily-brief --json | curl -X POST -d @- https://your-webhook.com/health

Email yourself out-of-range biomarkers

betterness biomarkers search --range OUT_OF_RANGE --json \
  | jq -r '.[] | "\(.name): \(.value) \(.unit) (range \(.minRange)-\(.maxRange))"' \
  | mail -s "Biomarkers out of range" you@example.com

Save daily activity to S3

DATE=$(date +%Y-%m-%d)
betterness activity get --from "$DATE" --to "$DATE" --timezone America/Denver --json \
  | aws s3 cp - "s3://my-bucket/activity/$DATE.json"

Detect significant biomarker changes

betterness biomarkers search --json \
  | jq '.[] | select((.value > (.maxRange // 9999)) or (.value < (.minRange // -9999))) | .name'

Use --quiet for exit-code-only checks

if betterness auth whoami --quiet; then
  betterness workflow daily-brief
else
  echo "Re-auth needed" >&2
  exit 1
fi

Tips

• Always include --timezone in cron — the cron host may be UTC
• Capture stderr separately — failures go there
• Rate limits: 100/day free, 5,000/day builder. Daily cron well within either tier.
• If you run on a server, store the API key in a secret manager and inject as BETTERNESS_API_KEY