---
title: "Cronnie — scheduled unattended agent sessions"
description: "How Cronnie runs pi as Argo CronWorkflows against the MLflow gateway, how sessions are traced and shown in the dashboard, and the cluster traps hit while building it."
image: "https://docs.virdx.dev/img/virdx-social-card.png"
---

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# Cronnie — scheduled unattended agent sessions

Code: `mono/apps/cronnie` (README has design + how to add a job). Runs in namespace
`autoresearch` as Argo `CronWorkflow`s; no server, no Argo Events. Dashboard page `/cronnie`.

## Contract

- Runtime tags every gateway call with `X-MLflow-Gateway-Caller: cronnie/<workflow uid>`.
  MLflow stores it as trace metadata `mlflow.gateway.caller`; the dashboard searches
  `POST /api/3.0/mlflow/traces/search` with
  ``filter: metadata.`mlflow.gateway.caller` = 'cronnie/<uid>'`` across the experiments listed by
  `GET /api/3.0/mlflow/gateway/endpoints/list`. Argo's `metadata.uid` is the only join key.
- Workflows carry `app.kubernetes.io/name=cronnie` and `cronnie.virdx.dev/job=<job>`. Cron-created
  workflows need `workflows.argoproj.io/creator-preferred-username: autoresearch` in
  `workflowMetadata`: the cron controller runs as the `argo` SA and is exempt from the
  autoresearch identity-injection rule, so without it runs are unattributed.
- Pi's `openai-completions` API always streams; Bedrock via bearer token refuses streaming.
  The runtime's loopback adapter does one non-streaming call and replays it as SSE
  (same trick as `apps/autoresearch-box`).

## Traps (all hit live, 2026-09-18)

- **MLflow gateway < 3.13 drops assistant `tool_calls`** when converting to Bedrock Converse:
  every second turn after a tool call 400s with "toolResult blocks exceed toolUse blocks".
  Fixed upstream in 3.13.0 (#23223) / 3.16.1 (#24309). Cluster upgraded to `v3.16.1-full`
  (infra_k8s#230); DB migration ran via the chart's init container, traces/endpoints intact.
- **Argo needs an explicit `command`** for images in the private registry: the controller
  cannot read image config (`secrets "zot-registry-credentials" is forbidden`).
- **Output artifacts in `autoresearch` fail**: the executor cannot verify `s3.fra.virdx.dev`
  (IPA CA, `x509: unknown authority`) and Argo skips artifacts on mounted volumes anyway.
  Cronnie keeps no artifacts; the transcript lives in MLflow + pod log. Fix would be a
  `caSecret` on the namespace artifact repository.
- **zot rejects Docker-media-type manifests** from `docker push` (`manifest invalid`, HTTP 415)
  and is only reachable via `kubectl port-forward -n zot svc/zot`. Push with
  `docker buildx build --output type=image,oci-mediatypes=true,push=true,registry.insecure=true`
  through a `docker-container` builder with `network=host`.
- OTLP encodes JSON `null` as a kvlist entry without `value`; decoders must tolerate it.
- Local dashboard against live Argo without Keycloak: `DASHBOARD_MOCK=true` plus
  `DASHBOARD_DEV_TOKEN_COMMAND="kubectl oidc-login get-token ... | jq -r .status.token"`.

Source: https://docs.virdx.dev/knowledge/wiki/workstreams/infrastructure/sops/cronnie-scheduled-agents/index.mdx