canonical: https://jentic.com/apis/402cron.com/402cron

# 402cron

The 402cron API schedules signed, verified HTTP delivery to endpoints you control, billed per delivery attempt rather than per outcome. You register a destination URL, answer a one-time verification challenge, then create tasks that 402cron delivers on a cron timetable, retrying an unreachable host up to three attempts in total. Delivery credits are bought up front with an x402 payment, carry no expiry, and every task exposes its failure counters and the credits it has left. There is no account, password, or OAuth: a bearer token issued when you buy credits authorizes every management call.

## For AI agents

Schedule signed HTTP deliveries to your own endpoints on a cron timetable, retry failed attempts, and track each task's remaining credits and failure counters. Pays per delivery attempt with x402 and uses a bearer token for every management call.

## Scope

Does not handle inbound webhook receiving, message queuing, or workflow branching. Use for scheduled outbound HTTP delivery only.

## Capabilities

- Register a destination URL and prove ownership by echoing a one-time verification challenge before any delivery runs
- Schedule HTTP deliveries on a cron timetable and run, pause, resume, or restore each task
- Buy delivery credits up front with an x402 payment and track the credits remaining on every task
- Deliver a task once immediately without disturbing its schedule
- Read a task's failure counters, next run times, and remaining credits to decide whether to keep retrying

## Use cases

### Agent-Driven Scheduled Delivery via Jentic

An AI agent that needs to call a webhook on a timetable can offload the scheduling to 402cron instead of running its own cron process. Through Jentic the agent registers a destination it controls, verifies it with the one-time challenge, and creates a task that fires on a cron schedule, letting 402cron handle retries and credit accounting while the agent only reacts to results.

Example prompt: Register a destination URL, verify it by echoing the challenge, then create a task that delivers an HTTP request to it every weekday at 09:00 and confirm the first delivery attempt succeeded

### Pay-Per-Attempt Cron Jobs

Teams that want scheduled HTTP calls without running infrastructure buy delivery credits with a single x402 payment and let 402cron run the schedule. Billing counts delivery attempts, not outcomes, and credits never expire, so a workload with a predictable number of runs has a predictable cost and a failing cycle is capped at three attempts.

Example prompt: Buy a starter credit pack with x402, create a task that runs hourly, and read the task to confirm how many credits remain after the first few runs

### Reliable Outbound Notification Delivery

A service that must notify an external endpoint reliably uses 402cron to deliver and automatically retry. Each cycle is attempted up to three times in total against an unreachable host, every task records its failure counters, and a one-off run can be triggered immediately to re-send after a fix without changing the recurring schedule.

Example prompt: Trigger an immediate one-off delivery of an existing task, then read its failure counters to verify the retry behaviour before the next scheduled run

## Key endpoints

| Method | Path | Description |
| --- | --- | --- |
| POST | `/api/tasks` | Create a scheduled delivery |
| GET | `/api/tasks` | List your tasks |
| POST | `/api/destinations` | Register a destination URL and receive its signing secret |
| POST | `/api/destinations/{id}/verify` | Verify a destination after echoing the challenge |
| POST | `/api/tasks/{id}/run` | Deliver a task once now without changing its schedule |
| PATCH | `/api/tasks/{id}` | Edit a task |
| GET | `/api/pricing` | Read the machine-readable tariff |

## Key resources

- **Destinations** — Register, verify, list, and remove the HTTPS URLs 402cron is allowed to deliver to.
- **Tasks** — Schedule, edit, run-now, pause, resume, restore, and inspect cron-based HTTP deliveries.
- **Credits and pricing** — Buy delivery credits with x402 and read the machine-readable tariff.

## AI readiness

This API is usable in Jentic One now. Its AI-readiness score against Jentic's framework shows where it stands today and where improvements would make it even easier for agents to use.

- **Score:** 63 / 100
- **Maturity:** AI-Aware
- **Dimensions:**
  - Foundational Compliance: 87 / 100
  - Developer Experience & Jentic Compatibility: 66 / 100
  - AI-Readiness & Agent Experience: 47 / 100
  - Agent Usability: 94 / 100
  - Security: 60 / 100
  - AI Discoverability: 52 / 100
- **View full report:** https://jentic.com/apis/402cron.com/402cron/scorecard
- **How the score is calculated:** https://docs.jentic.com/reference/api-readiness-framework/overview/
- **More about the dimensions:** https://docs.jentic.com/reference/api-readiness-framework/specification/#dimensional-model-overview

### Score it yourself

Every API in the directory is allowlisted, so you can re-score it with no key required.

- **Score your own API:** https://jentic.com/scorecard.md
- **Scoring CLI agent skill:** https://github.com/jentic/jentic-api-scorecard/blob/main/skills/jentic-api-scorecard/SKILL.md

```sh
npx @jentic/api-scorecard-cli score <openapi-url>
```

## Why Jentic

- **Setup:** Wiring 402cron by hand means buying delivery credits with an x402 payment, learning its bearer token, registering and verifying a destination URL you control, and respecting its three-attempt retry rule yourself. Through Jentic you install once, import 402cron from the API Directory, store the token once, and your agent schedules deliveries.
- **Permission scoping:** 402cron puts the task id in the URL path, so a rule can pin your agent to one task and the operations you choose, such as creating and running deliveries. You decide which operations it may call, so destructive ones like deleting a task or a destination are not included unless you add them.
- **Credential handling:** Your 402cron bearer token is stored once, encrypted, by your own Jentic One instance and injected at execution time. It never enters the agent's prompt, logs, or context.
- **Discovery method:** Agents search Jentic by intent such as 'schedule a recurring HTTP delivery' or 'retry a failed task', and Jentic returns the matching 402cron operation with its input schema so the agent calls the right endpoint without reading the reference docs.

## Related APIs

- **Svix** — Svix is webhook delivery infrastructure with retries and signing; 402cron adds cron scheduling and pay-per-attempt x402 billing.
- **Temporal** — Temporal runs durable multi-step workflows you host; 402cron is a hosted single-shot HTTP delivery scheduler with no infrastructure to run.
- **Hookdeck** — Hookdeck queues and routes inbound webhooks; 402cron handles the scheduled outbound delivery side.
- **n8n** — n8n orchestrates multi-step automations; 402cron can be the reliable scheduled HTTP step within or alongside those flows.

## FAQ

### What authentication does the 402cron API use?

The 402cron API authenticates management calls with a bearer token sent in an Authorization: Bearer header, per its OpenAPI spec. You receive the token once when you buy delivery credits, so there is no account, password, or OAuth step. The credit-purchase, pricing, and health endpoints are open and need no token, while calls under /api/ carry it. Through Jentic the token is stored encrypted on your own instance and injected at call time.

### Is there a 402cron MCP server?

You don't need an MCP server to give your agent 402cron. Jentic connects it directly from the API Directory: import 402cron, store your token once, and your agent schedules and tracks deliveries straight away. That keeps your agent's context free of an extra server's tool definitions, since operations are discovered on demand.

### Can I limit what my agent is allowed to do with the 402cron API?

Yes. Because the task id travels in the URL path, you can write a rule that allows only the create-task and run-now operations for one task, so the agent can schedule and trigger deliveries for that task and nothing else. Deleting tasks or removing destinations stays out of the rule unless you add it, and every call the agent makes is logged.

### Can I schedule recurring deliveries with the 402cron API?

Yes. Create a task with a cron timetable and 402cron delivers to your verified destination on that schedule, retrying an unreachable host up to three attempts in total. You can also run a task once immediately without touching its schedule, pause and resume it, and read its failure counters and next run times at any point.

### What are the rate limits for the 402cron API?

The 402cron OpenAPI spec does not publish request rate limits. What it does bound is delivery: a failing cycle is attempted at most three times in total, so one unreachable destination costs at most three credits. Check the 402cron documentation at https://402cron.com/docs for any current request limits.

### How do I schedule a delivery with the 402cron API through Jentic?

Search the Jentic API Directory for an intent like 'schedule a recurring HTTP delivery', import 402cron, and store your bearer token once. Your agent then registers a destination, verifies it, and creates a task pointing at that URL by calling the create-task and run-now operations through Jentic. To run it on your own infrastructure, install Jentic One from its GitHub repo.