Crontinel Laravel Integration: Setup and Configuration

Crontinel is a Laravel-native monitoring tool built as a Composer package. The OSS package runs inside your application and monitors scheduled tasks, Horizon workers, and queue state. Optionally, it reports to the Crontinel cloud dashboard for historical records and alert management.

Requirements

Laravel 10 or 11
PHP 8.1 or higher
Redis (required for Horizon monitoring; optional for cron-only monitoring)

Installation

Add the package via Composer:

composer require crontinel/laravel

Run the installer command:

php artisan crontinel:install

The installer publishes the config file and prompts you to publish and run migrations. You can also do this manually:

php artisan vendor:publish --tag=crontinel-config
php artisan vendor:publish --tag=crontinel-migrations
php artisan migrate

Configuration

The published config file is config/crontinel.php. Most settings are driven by environment variables, so you typically don’t need to modify the config file directly.

Add these to your .env:

# Required: sets the alert destination
CRONTINEL_ALERT_CHANNEL=slack          # slack | mail | webhook | pagerduty | null

# Slack
CRONTINEL_SLACK_WEBHOOK=https://hooks.slack.com/services/T00000000/B00000000/XXXXXXXX

# Email
CRONTINEL_ALERT_EMAIL=alerts@yourcompany.com

# Webhook
CRONTINEL_WEBHOOK_URL=https://your-endpoint.example.com/crontinel-alerts

# PagerDuty
CRONTINEL_PAGERDUTY_ROUTING_KEY=your-events-api-v2-key

# Optional: connect to cloud dashboard
CRONTINEL_API_KEY=ct_app_xxxxxxxxxxxx
CRONTINEL_APP_NAME="My Laravel App"

How scheduling monitoring works

Crontinel automatically hooks into Laravel’s scheduler event lifecycle. No changes to your Kernel.php or routes/console.php are needed.

When php artisan schedule:run executes:

Crontinel records a run attempt for each scheduled task
After each task completes, exit code and duration are stored
Failed tasks (non-zero exit) trigger an alert through the configured channel
Run records are persisted locally (and synced to the cloud dashboard if an API key is configured)

How Horizon monitoring works

If Laravel Horizon is installed, Crontinel detects it automatically and starts polling Horizon’s Redis keys. It monitors:

Supervisor status (running, paused, stopped) per supervisor
Per-queue pending job count
Oldest pending job age per queue
Failed job rate over the last 5 minutes

Horizon monitoring runs on a 30-second polling interval by default:

CRONTINEL_HORIZON_POLL_INTERVAL=30     # seconds
CRONTINEL_QUEUE_DEPTH_THRESHOLD=100
CRONTINEL_OLDEST_JOB_MINUTES=15
CRONTINEL_FAILED_JOBS_PER_MINUTE=5

Checking monitoring status

After installation, verify everything is working:

php artisan crontinel:check

This command shows the status of each monitored component: last scheduler run time, Horizon supervisor states, and queue depths.

To test your alert channel:

php artisan crontinel:test-alert

Cloud dashboard setup

The OSS package works standalone without a cloud account. To enable the dashboard, run history, and team access, create an account at app.crontinel.com, create an app, and copy the API key to your .env.

Deploying to production

Crontinel works in any deployment environment: traditional VPS, Forge-managed servers, Vapor, Docker containers, and Kubernetes. The package reads from Redis and the local database; it doesn’t need outbound HTTP to function (alerts are the only outbound calls).

For zero-downtime deploys with Envoyer: add php artisan crontinel:check to your deploy hooks to verify monitoring is intact after each deploy.

Free tier limits

The free plan covers one connected app, five monitors, and 7 days of cron run history. Starter, Pro, and Max are planned; their paid terms are still under review.