Feature request: native cron/schedule trigger support

[craigedmunds]

Feature Request: Native Schedule Trigger Support

Summary

I'd like to propose native cron/schedule trigger support in Sortie — the ability to create runs on a schedule without requiring a GitHub issue as a trigger.

Context

Sortie is currently purely issue-driven with polling, which works great for on-demand tasks. However, there's a growing need for recurring scheduled agent work — things like daily wiki updates, periodic audits, scheduled reports, or recurring maintenance tasks.

I see that this space is already being explored:

• Issue Publish official GitHub Action for running Sortie on a schedule or trigger #280 proposes a GitHub Action wrapper for scheduled runs (assigned, milestone M21)
• Issue Host multiple workflows in a single sortie daemon (multi-repo use case) #485 addresses multi-workflow/multi-repo support

Both of these are relevant to the scheduling use case.

Use Case

When using Sortie to power autonomous agents that need to perform recurring work:

• Daily wiki/documentation updates — an agent refreshes docs on a schedule
• Periodic audits — security scans, dependency checks, code quality sweeps
• Scheduled reports — weekly summaries, metric snapshots

Currently, each scheduled run requires creating a GitHub issue first, which adds overhead and clutters the issue tracker for what are essentially routine, automated operations.

Proposal

A lightweight schedule trigger that:

1. Accepts a cron expression (e.g., 0 9 * * 1-5 for weekday mornings)
2. Creates a Sortie run when the schedule fires, without requiring an issue
3. Optionally links to a template or configuration that defines what the agent should do on each run

Question for the Team

Given the approach outlined in #280 (GitHub Action wrapper) and Sortie's design philosophy as a stateless run-to-completion tool invoked by external schedulers:

• Would the team consider a lightweight built-in schedule adapter within Sortie itself?
• Or is the recommended path to use the GitHub Action wrapper from Publish official GitHub Action for running Sortie on a schedule or trigger #280 as the external scheduler, with Sortie remaining purely reactive?

Either approach would work — just looking for guidance on the preferred direction so we can align our usage accordingly.

Environment

Using Sortie for AI agent orchestration with multiple agents that need recurring scheduled work patterns.

[sergeyklay]

Thanks for the writeup.

You're right that #280 and #488 are different problems. #280 schedules when Sortie polls. Sortie still expects an issue as the trigger. Your use case is run a task on a schedule, no issue. Those don't compose: putting #280 in front of today's Sortie just gives polling on a cron, not execution on a cron.

Schedule as a first-class trigger is on the table, but needs thought. The hard part isn't the cron parser. It's where state lives without an issue. Handoff, budget, writeback all currently hang off the issue.

Two shapes worth considering:

1. Sortie creates an issue on schedule, then runs the normal flow. Minimal change, but the tracker still gets one issue per run.
2. A ScheduledRun as a first-class concept, no issue required. Cleaner, but a real domain change.

Leaving this open as the tracking issue for the direction. If you have a concrete shape in mind for the WORKFLOW.md surface, happy to see it.