Quickstart

Monitor your first cron job in under 2 minutes.

1

Create a monitor

Log in, click New monitor, give it a name and set how often your job runs. You'll get a unique ping URL.

2

Add the ping to your job

Call the ping URL at the end of your job. That's it — if we don't hear from it, we alert you.

3

(Optional) Track duration

Enable duration monitoring in the monitor settings, then use the two-call pattern. We track how long your job takes and alert you if it runs unexpectedly slow.

4

(Optional) Assert output

Pass a count parameter with your ping. DeadManCheck will alert you if your job runs but processes zero rows — catching silent failures that duration monitoring misses entirely.

Code examples

Bash / cron

# Simple heartbeat
curl -s https://deadmancheck.io/ping/YOUR-ID

# With duration tracking
curl -s https://deadmancheck.io/ping/YOUR-ID/start
./your_job.sh
curl -s https://deadmancheck.io/ping/YOUR-ID

# With output assertions — alert if count is 0
ROWS=$(./your_job.sh)
curl -s -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d "{\"count\": $ROWS}" \
  https://deadmancheck.io/ping/YOUR-ID

# Report failure
curl -s "https://deadmancheck.io/ping/YOUR-ID/fail?exit_code=1"

Python

import httpx

PING_URL = 'https://deadmancheck.io/ping/YOUR-ID'

# At start
httpx.get(f'{PING_URL}/start')

# ... your job ...
rows_processed = run_etl()

# On success — pass row count for output assertions
httpx.post(PING_URL, json={'count': rows_processed})

# On failure
httpx.get(f'{PING_URL}/fail', params={'exit_code': 1})

GitHub Actions

- name: Run job
  id: job
  run: |
    ./your_job.sh
    echo "rows=$(cat /tmp/row_count.txt)" >> $GITHUB_OUTPUT

- name: Ping DeadManCheck
  if: success()
  run: |
    curl -s -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
      -d "{\"count\": ${{ steps.job.outputs.rows }}}" \
      https://deadmancheck.io/ping/YOUR-ID

- name: Report failure
  if: failure()
  run: curl -s https://deadmancheck.io/ping/YOUR-ID/fail

Node.js

const PING_URL = 'https://deadmancheck.io/ping/YOUR-ID';

await fetch(`${PING_URL}/start`);

try {
  const rowsProcessed = await yourJob();
  // Pass count — alerts if job ran but processed nothing
  await fetch(PING_URL, {
    method: 'POST',
    headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/json' },
    body: JSON.stringify({ count: rowsProcessed })
  });
} catch (err) {
  await fetch(`${PING_URL}/fail?exit_code=1`);
  throw err;
}
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