How Autoretto's scheduler actually triggers uploads

Scheduling uploads used to be about picking a future time. Autoretto would look at the next slot on your calendar and wait for that moment to arrive. If the platform wasn't running at that exact second, the slot got skipped. That changed. Now the scheduler keys off the most recent past slot inside a catch-up window.

Think of a catch-up window as a flexible bucket of time. The scheduler looks backwards, not forwards. It checks which slot was supposed to happen most recently and sees if it's still inside the window. If it is, that slot is due. If it's too old, it's dropped.

This approach makes the schedule resilient. You might have a slot at 2 PM and another at 4 PM. If the platform checks at 3 PM, it sees the 2 PM slot as the most recent past slot. That slot is still inside the window, so it uploads. No browser needs to be open. The server does the work.

That's where the cron comes in. Autoretto runs a check every hour, on the hour. Each check drains all due slots. The cron runs on the server, so you don't need to keep a laptop or browser open. You set the schedule once, and the cron makes sure the videos go out.

If the cron hasn't run for a while, say because a server was down, the most recent past slot might fall outside the catch-up window. In that case, the scheduler skips it and moves on. It doesn't try to upload a video that was due three days ago. That keeps the channel from getting a weird backlog.

To avoid double publishing, Autoretto keeps a last-release stamp. This is a timestamp stored with the channel. Every time a release is scheduled and actually sent to YouTube, the stamp is updated. If two cron runs overlap, or if you trigger a manual run at the same time, the second run checks the stamp. If the stamp already matches the slot, it knows that video is done and skips it.

Imagine the hourly cron runs at 3 PM and starts uploading. It takes a few minutes. The next cron runs at 4 PM. By then, the 3 PM slot has been stamped. The 4 PM run looks for the most recent past slot. It sees the 3 PM slot was already handled and the 4 PM slot hasn't come yet. No video gets duplicated. The stamp acts like a receipt.

This system is simple once you see it. The scheduler uses the past to decide what's due, the cron does the heavy lifting, and the stamp prevents accidents. You set a schedule, Autoretto handles the rest. That's how uploads actually happen now.