Cron Environment¶

New to cron? See Understanding Cron and Crontab first.

Cron runs processes in a nearly empty environment: no PATH beyond /usr/bin:/bin, no Ruby version manager, no user-defined variables. Without intervention, aia would not be found and API keys would not be set, so every job would fail silently.

How aias Solves This¶

aias captures your live shell environment into a file and sources it before every cron invocation. This is a one-time setup step:

aias install

install reads your current session's environment and writes it to ~/.config/aia/schedule/env.sh. Every generated cron entry sources that file before running aia:

0 8 * * * /bin/bash -c 'source ~/.config/aia/schedule/env.sh && \
  aia --prompts-dir /path/to/prompts \
      --config ~/.config/aia/schedule/aia.yml \
      daily_digest > ~/.config/aia/schedule/logs/daily_digest.log 2>&1'

What Gets Captured¶

aias install captures these variable groups by default:

Group	Example variables
`PATH`	The full path including rbenv/asdf shims, Homebrew, MCP server binaries
`*_API_KEY`	`ANTHROPIC_API_KEY`, `OPENAI_API_KEY`, `GEMINI_API_KEY`, etc.
`AIA_*`	`AIA_PROMPTS__DIR`, `AIA_MODEL`, `AIA_FLAGS__VERBOSE`, etc.
`LANG`, `LC_ALL`	Locale settings (required for Ruby UTF-8 string handling)

Capturing Additional Variables¶

Pass glob patterns to aias install to capture additional variable groups:

aias install 'OPENROUTER_*'
aias install 'AIA_*' 'MY_SERVICE_*'
aias install 'AIA_* OPENROUTER_*'   # space-separated in a single argument

Patterns are matched case-insensitively. Variables matching the default groups are always included regardless of patterns.

Keeping env.sh Current¶

env.sh is a snapshot of your environment at the time aias install was run. Re-run install whenever:

You rotate or add an API key
You install a new MCP server binary (it needs to be on PATH)
You change your Ruby version or version manager configuration
You add or change an AIA_* variable

aias install   # re-captures and overwrites the managed block in env.sh

The file uses # BEGIN aias-env / # END aias-env markers. If you add your own content to env.sh outside those markers it is preserved on every install run.

An earlier version of aias used -l (login shell) to source the user's shell profile on each run. This was unreliable on macOS: /usr/libexec/path_helper — invoked by the login profile — unconditionally rebuilds PATH from /etc/paths and /etc/paths.d/, discarding any rbenv or asdf shims added earlier in the session. Version manager shims would disappear, aia would not be found, and jobs would fail.

The env.sh approach captures PATH at the moment you run aias install — when the correct, fully-activated PATH is already in place — and replays it verbatim in every cron invocation.

Viewing the Captured Environment¶

cat ~/.config/aia/schedule/env.sh

The managed block looks like:

# BEGIN aias-env
export PATH="/Users/you/.rbenv/shims:/opt/homebrew/bin:/usr/bin:/bin"
export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY="sk-ant-..."
export AIA_PROMPTS__DIR="/Users/you/.prompts"
export LANG="en_US.UTF-8"
export LC_ALL="en_US.UTF-8"
# END aias-env

Removing the Captured Environment¶

aias uninstall

Removes the managed block from env.sh. The rest of the file (and the rest of the schedule configuration) is preserved. Installed cron jobs are not removed — use aias clear for that.

Troubleshooting¶

If a job is failing, check the log first:

cat ~/.config/aia/schedule/logs/daily_digest.log

aia: command not found The aia binary path captured in env.sh is no longer valid. Common cause: you changed Ruby versions or reinstalled gems. Fix: re-run aias install.

Ruby encoding error ("\xE2" on US-ASCII) LANG or LC_ALL is missing from env.sh. Fix: re-run aias install from a terminal with a UTF-8 locale.

API authentication error The API key in env.sh is expired or wrong. Fix: set the correct key in your shell, then re-run aias install.

MCP server binary not found The binary was installed after the last aias install. Fix: re-run aias install to capture the updated PATH.