Building Bots

⏰ Timers

Timers schedule flows to run automatically on a repeating interval using cron expressions — no user interaction needed. Perfect for daily digests, periodic cleanups, and scheduled announcements.

🔬What a timer looks like

This is what a timer card looks like in your bot's Timers tab:

⏰

Daily digest

Timer

Scheduled

Cron expression

0 9 * * *

📐Under the hood — timers are cron jobs

TypeScript

// A Timer is a cron job — Kitcord schedules these for you:
import { CronJob } from "cron";

new CronJob("0 9 * * *", async () => {
  // Your flow runs here on every tick (daily at 9 AM UTC):
  const topScores = await db.all("SELECT * FROM scores ORDER BY points DESC LIMIT 10");
  await leaderboardChannel.send(formatLeaderboard(topScores));
}).start();

// Kitcord reads timers[] from your Kit and schedules each cron automatically.

🗓️Cron Expressions

Timers use standard 5-field cron syntax. All times are UTC.

minute

hour

day

month

weekday

0–59

0–23

1–31

1–12

0–7

0 9 * * *← Every day at 9:00 AM UTC

Examples

`* * * * *`	Every minute
`0 * * * *`	Every hour (on the hour)
`0 9 * * *`	Every day at 9:00 AM UTC
`0 0 * * 0`	Every Sunday at midnight UTC
`0 0 1 * *`	First day of every month
`/15 * * *`	Every 15 minutes
`30 6 * * 1-5`	Weekdays at 6:30 AM UTC
`0 12 * * 5`	Every Friday at noon UTC

💡Good to know

Weekday 0 and 7 both mean Sunday. Ranges work: 1-5 = Monday through Friday. Step values work: */15 = every 15 minutes.

✨Sparks in Timer Flows

Timer flows don't have a user invoking them, so most input.* sparks are not available. You can still use:

{{input.guild.id}}Server ID (shared with other flow types)

{{timestamp}}Current time in ISO format when the timer fires

{{date}}Today's date (YYYY-MM-DD)

{{score}}Any spark set by an upstream piece in this timer flow

✨Pro tip

Use Send Message with a channel ID in the config, or store the channel ID in the Vault and read it at the start of the timer flow.

📋Scheduling Notes

•All cron times are UTC — remember to offset for your local timezone.
•The minimum interval is 1 minute (*/1 or * * * * *). Tighter intervals are not supported.
•If your bot is offline when a timer fires, the tick is skipped — not queued.
•Multiple timers can point to the same flow.
•Timers run in the same execution environment as Spell and Trigger flows.

Next: Expansions →Sparks docs →