Feature Request: Add 'H' (hash) support and cron aliases to workflow schedules

[kieran-smith77]

Why are you starting this discussion?

Product Feedback

What GitHub Actions topic or product is this about?

Schedule & Cron Jobs

Discussion Details

In some CI/CD alternatives like Jenkins, the H (hash) symbol can be used in cron schedules to add a consistent, randomised hash. This provides a simple way to smooth workloads by spreading scheduled tasks across a given timeframe.

This "hash" functionality seems missing from GitHub Actions Cron schedules. It would benefit users by:

• Reducing rate-limit issues when multiple jobs using the same credentials start simultaneously.
• Lowering the risk of collisions where multiple jobs attempt to modify the same resource at the same time.
• Reducing load on hosted action runners in a customer's environment

Its addition would likely benefit GitHub too by reducing spikes in hosted-runner creation at common intervals (e.g., midnight or 9 AM) across various timezones.

Additionally, while the GitHub Docs explicitly state aliases like @Yearly, @monthly, @Weekly, @daily, and @hourly are unsupported, adding them would likely improve usability for users unfamiliar with standard cron syntax.

[kieran-smith77]

Just one example from this forum where this functionality would be beneficial