The gap
A cron line that looks right can run every minute for an hour, run on every Monday as well as the 1st, never run at all, or run twice when the clocks go back, and cron itself never says so.
Developer tools
Tickwright
A command-line tool that validates cron expressions, explains them in English and Bulgarian, lists the next runs across daylight-saving changes and lints the mistakes cron never reports.
- Go
- IANA time zone database
- Coming soon
Coming soon
Not published on its store yet, so there is no buy or download link. PN Scripts does not take payment for it here.
What it solves
What it is
Tickwright parses the expression the way cron does, explains it in words, lists real run times in your zone across daylight-saving changes, compares alternatives and warns about known traps before deployment.
How you use it
Find the schedule mistake on your machine or in CI instead of in production logs weeks later.
For developers and system administrators who write crontabs, Kubernetes CronJobs or scheduler settings, Tickwright is an offline checker that gives exact run times and readable explanations in English and Bulgarian.
Who it is for
Use it when
- Checking a new crontab line before it goes to a server
- Linting every schedule in a repository in a CI job
- Explaining a schedule to a colleague or client in Bulgarian or English
Built for
- Backend developers and DevOps engineers
- System administrators who maintain crontabs
What is inside
Explain
Each expression becomes one sentence in English and one in Bulgarian, for example "At 09:00, Monday through Friday" and "В 09:00, от понеделник до петък". Lists, ranges, steps, month names and macros are described rather than echoed back.
Next runs across clock changes
Run times are computed on the local wall clock of the chosen zone. A fixed time that does not exist on the spring-forward day moves forward by the gap, a repeated time on the fall-back day runs once, and hourly schedules follow real elapsed time, the same rules classic Vixie cron uses.
Compare and lint
Compare says whether two expressions give identical runs and shows where they first differ. Lint looks for day-of-month and day-of-week set together, dates that never occur, leap-day and month-end traps, uneven steps, wildcard minutes and fixed times inside daylight-saving changes.
Made for scripts and CI
Every command accepts --json. Exit code 0 means success, 1 an invalid expression, 2 a usage error and 3 lint warnings or a difference in compare, so a pipeline can stop on a bad schedule.
Gallery
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Specs
- Availability
- Coming soon
- Vendor
- PN Scripts
- Type
- Software
- Platforms
- Go
- Pricing
- One-time purchase Price to be announced.
- License
- Proprietary
- Deployment
- Download (prebuilt binaries for Linux, macOS and Windows, plus Go source)
- Maturity
- v1.0.0
Compatibility
| Platform or runtime | Supported versions | Tested up to |
|---|---|---|
| Linux amd64 (binary run) | kernel 3.2 or newer | Ubuntu 24.04, kernel 6.8 |
| Go (to build from source) | 1.22 or newer | 1.26.0 |
Stack
- Go
- IANA time zone database
Tickwright is coming soon
It is finished and tested. It is not on sale yet; this page will say where to get it when it is.
Coming soon
Not published on its store yet, so there is no buy or download link. PN Scripts does not take payment for it here.
Questions
A command-line tool for cron expressions: validate, explain in English and Bulgarian, list next runs in a time zone, compare two expressions and lint common mistakes.
Nothing besides the binary for your platform (Linux, macOS or Windows, amd64 or arm64). To build from source you need Go 1.22 or newer.
It does not install or run jobs, edit your crontab or talk to a scheduler. Quartz syntax (L, W, #) and the year field are not supported. Only the Linux amd64 binary was run during testing.
It is written in Go with no third-party modules and covered by unit tests for parsing, explanations, run times in several zones and every lint rule. Created with AI assistance; the parser, scheduler, explanations and CLI were checked by PN Scripts with an automated Go test suite (including the 2026 and 2027 clock changes in Europe/Sofia) and by running the Linux binary.
It is not on sale yet. When it is, this page will link to the store; PN Scripts does not take payment on this site.
