Cron Sense

Cron Sense

Translate cron-like schedules into human-readable English inside Zed.

Extension ID: cron-sense-lsp

Inspired by the VS Code extension Cron Explained by Tom Coufal (@tumido) (VS Marketplace, Open VSX).

This is an independent, from-scratch reimplementation for Zed. It is not a fork of the original source and is not affiliated with the original author beyond credit for the concept and UX.

Features

Hover tooltips

Hover a cron expression in supported languages and get a plain-English explanation powered by cronstrue.

Supported language contexts include Shell Script, YAML, TOML, JSON, Dockerfile, JavaScript/TypeScript, Python, Ruby, Go, Rust, Markdown, and Plain Text.

Code action: insert as comment

Open the code actions menu on a cron expression (default: cmd-. / ctrl-.) and choose Insert cron explanation to append a comment on that line. Running it again replaces the previous explanation (no stacked comments).

Install (dev extension)

1. Clone or open this repository.
2. In Zed: Extensions → Install Dev Extension…
3. Select the cron-sense directory.

On first use, the extension installs the language server from npm as cron-sense-lsp. That package bundles the server script and its dependencies (cronstrue, vscode-languageserver, …).

Settings

Optional LSP settings in your Zed settings.json:

{
  "lsp": {
    "cron-sense-lsp": {
      "settings": {
        "use24HourTimeFormat": true,
        "verbose": true,
        "dayOfWeekStartIndexZero": true,
        "monthStartIndexZero": false,
        "locale": "en"
      }
    }
  }
}

How it works

The language server is not embedded in the extension package (Zed publishing requirement). Source lives in server/ and is published to the public npm registry.

Development

Requirements: Rust (with wasm32-wasip2 via rustup), Node, Zed.

# Typecheck / test the extension crate
cargo test --lib
cargo check --target wasm32-wasip2

# Smoke-test the language server locally
cd server && npm install && npm test
# or speak LSP over stdio:
npm start

Publishing the language server (npm)

cd server
npm login          # once
npm version patch  # or set version in package.json
npm publish --access public

Keep server/package.json version aligned with the extension when cutting a release that depends on new server behavior.

Cutting an extension release

1. Bump version in extension.toml and Cargo.toml (keep them equal).
2. Ensure the matching cron-sense-lsp version is on npm (or rely on latest).
3. Tag vX.Y.Z on this repo.
4. Open/update a PR on zed-industries/extensions with submodule extensions/cron-sense-lsp and matching version in extensions.toml.

Credits & acknowledgements

Inspiration

Cron Explained for VS Code / Open VSX
Author: Tom Coufal (@tumido)
License: GPL-3.0-or-later

Please support and star the original if you find the concept useful.

Libraries

• Translations: cronstrue by Brady Holt
• LSP stack: vscode-languageserver

License

This repository is licensed under the MIT License.

That applies to this project’s code only. The original tumido/cron-explained project remains GPL-3.0-or-later under its own license.