Check Your WordPress Cron Health with WP Crontrol and AI

Late, paused, orphaned and broken scheduled events found and explained in one read-only report.

Difficulty Beginner

Time ~5 min

Prerequisites

A site connected to WPVibe running WP Crontrol 2.0 or newer (tested on 2.0.0, free) on WordPress 6.9 or newer, with an administrator account.

The prompt

My WordPress site uses WP Crontrol. Check the health of my scheduled events (WP-Cron). Don't change anything.

1. Run discover_abilities with category wp-crontrol. If the ability this needs is not there, stop and tell me to install or update the free WP Crontrol plugin (2.0 or newer, on WordPress 6.9 or newer).
2. Run wp-crontrol/list-events with type late. Late means more than 10 minutes overdue. If several events are late, tell me WP-Cron itself is probably not running: often DISABLE_WP_CRON is set with no server cron job to replace it, the site can't send requests to itself (blocked by the host or a firewall), or the site gets too few visits. Name the late events and how overdue each is.
3. Run wp-crontrol/list-events with type paused and list them: paused events do nothing when they run. Ask me whether each pause is still wanted.
4. Run wp-crontrol/list-events with type no_action and per_page 200, and run rest_api GET /wp/v2/plugins with status active. Group the events by the plugin their hook name suggests. If that plugin is active, say the event is probably fine: some plugins attach their handler only while cron runs or only when a setting is on. If the plugin is inactive or not installed, say the event is left over and does nothing when it runs, and that removing it is done on WP Crontrol's Cron Events screen (under Tools or its Cron menu). Do not delete anything.
5. Run wp-crontrol/list-events with per_page 200 (and page 2 and up while total is larger) and list any event with schedule_missing true (its schedule was removed, usually with its plugin) or has_error true (its stored data is broken: for a PHP or URL cron event, check and save it again on the Cron Events screen; for any other event, name the plugin it belongs to).
6. Finish with a short report: what is fine, what needs me, and the single most important thing to do first.

Already connected?

Skip pasting the full prompt. Drop this into your AI on a site that already has WPVibe:

Run the “Check Your WordPress Cron Health with WP Crontrol and AI” recipe from the WPVibe cookbook on my connected site.

Scheduled posts that miss their time, renewal emails that go out late, a site full of jobs left behind by plugins you deleted years ago. WP-Cron problems are quiet, and the list of scheduled events is long and cryptic.

The AI reads every event through WP Crontrol and sorts out what needs you: jobs running late, jobs paused and forgotten, jobs with no handler, and jobs whose schedule is gone. It checks each one without a handler against your active plugins, explains each group in plain words and changes nothing.

Removing leftover events isn’t something WP Crontrol’s abilities do, so the report tells you where: WP Crontrol’s Cron Events screen, or this recipe, which deletes them with your approval. Delete only events whose plugin is gone: some active plugins attach their handler only while cron runs, so their events look unhandled too. On our test site, 36 events showed no handler, and one of them belonged to LifterLMS, which was active.

Outcome

A report of what is late, paused, orphaned or broken in your scheduled events, with nothing changed.