Summary

When triggering a cron job via the cron run tool, if the job takes longer than 60 seconds, the tool returns a gateway timeout error. This displays as ⚠️ ⏰ Cron: run... to the user, making it look like the job failed.

However, the job actually runs successfully in the background and completes normally.

Problem

• User sees scary error messages (⚠️) for jobs that succeed
• Creates confusion about whether jobs actually ran
• Noisy UX during conversations when manually triggering cron jobs

Expected Behavior

Either:

1. Don't surface timeouts as errors when the job was successfully queued
2. Use a different indicator (like ⏳ "running in background") instead of ⚠️
3. Increase the timeout for cron run operations
4. Return immediately with "job queued" instead of waiting for completion

Environment

• OpenClaw: 2026.2.17
• OS: macOS 26.3.0 (arm64)

Repro

1. Create an isolated cron job that takes >60 seconds
2. Trigger it with cron run
3. Observe: gateway timeout error displayed
4. Check cron runs: job completed successfully