Support BYHOUR in automation RRULE schedules

Resolved 💬 2 comments Opened May 27, 2026 by asadman1523 Closed May 27, 2026

Summary

Please allow Codex automation schedules to accept BYHOUR in RRULE definitions.

Motivation

Automation scheduling currently supports recurring schedules, but RRULEs that include BYHOUR appear to be rejected. This makes it harder to express common schedules directly, especially when users want a recurring task at a specific hour without relying on a more limited schedule shape.

Example

A schedule like this should be accepted:

FREQ=WEEKLY;BYDAY=MO,TU,WE,TH,FR;BYHOUR=9;BYMINUTE=0

Expected behavior

Codex automations should parse and accept valid RRULE schedules that include BYHOUR, and run the automation at the specified hour according to the user's configured timezone.

Actual behavior

Schedules containing BYHOUR are currently not accepted.

Use case

This would make automation scheduling more expressive and closer to standard RRULE semantics, allowing users to define precise hourly constraints for weekly or daily recurring automations.

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2 Comments

asadman1523 · 3 months ago

Additional context: the current/default schedule shape for this use case is effectively:

RRULE:FREQ=MINUTELY;INTERVAL=60

That works as an hourly interval, but it does not express a specific wall-clock hour the way BYHOUR would. Supporting BYHOUR would let users define schedules by intended hour rather than only by interval.

asadman1523 · 3 months ago

Closing this to avoid fragmenting the RRULE automation discussion. There are already related reports covering BYHOUR handling and minute/hour scheduling behavior, especially #16410, #23370, and #18472.