# chronic (moreutils)

9 Hacker News commenters recommended chronic (moreutils) and 0 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 4 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Wraps a cron job so it stays quiet on success and mails its full output when the command fails, so failures surface without reviewing logs.

## Why people recommend it

- Surfaces cron failures without manual log review (2 comments): "Very useful for knowing when a cron fails without needing to manually review every log run." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46726116)) "cronic combined with a healthcheck, immediate failure alerting and integration" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49780658))
- Quiet unless a job fails (2 comments): "You could just wrap cronic around the command and immediately receive the full output per mail when it fails." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49776795)) "That way you don't need to worry about things sent to STDOUT spamming you." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46725227))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [fzf](https://hackerapproved.com/p/fzf.md): 78 recommend
- [jq](https://hackerapproved.com/p/jq.md): 75 recommend
- [grep](https://hackerapproved.com/p/grep.md): 65 recommend
- [Atuin](https://hackerapproved.com/p/atuin.md): 63 recommend
- [GitHub CLI](https://hackerapproved.com/p/github-cli.md): 49 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "chronic (moreutils)", https://hackerapproved.com/p/chronic/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).