band-loop

Band Loop

Recurring agent tasks via band cronjobs. The agent fires on a cron schedule against a target worktree — dispatching each iteration to the worktree's chat pane (default) or the agent's terminal CLI (--via terminal) — optionally checks a stop condition each iteration, and deletes its own cronjob when the condition is met.

This is the native answer for users who reach for Claude Code's built-in /loop: that command is gated behind scheduledTasksEnabled, which is always false in SDK / Band sessions. band cronjobs runs server-side and survives session restarts.

This skill is focused on the scheduled-loop pattern. For broader operations see the sibling skills:

• band — worktrees, repos, tunnel, settings (also documents band cronjobs for general CRUD).
• band-start — create a new worktree and kick off the first agent task.
• band-chat — chat panes inside a worktree (the loop's prompt is dispatched to a chat).

Prerequisites

• The Band server must be running (started by the Band dashboard app).
• A target worktree must exist (use band-start to create one first if needed).

JSON Output

All commands support --output json (or BAND_OUTPUT=json env var) for structured output.

• Success: JSON object to stdout, exit code 0
• Error: {"error": "message"} to stderr, exit code 1

Workflow

1. Resolve the loop target

Every cronjob belongs to one worktree (the repo's default-branch worktree or any other), so the prompt fires into the same chat over and over:

# Auto-detect the worktree ID from cwd
ws_id=$(band worktrees list --output json \
  | jq -r --arg cwd "$PWD" '.worktrees[] | select(.path == $cwd) | .id' \
  | head -1)

If the user is outside a worktree cwd, ask them which worktree to target (or run band worktrees list and pick one).

2. Parse the interval into a cron expression

Accept human durations (5m, 10m, 1h, 6h, 1d). Default is 10m. Map to a standard 5-field cron expression in the server's local timezone: