Automation

Rudel's automation layer is not just sandbox cleanup anymore. The hourly WP-Cron runner can now sweep stale sandboxes, create scheduled app backups, prune old recovery history, and surface environments that are close to expiry.

What runs automatically

When any automation feature is enabled, Rudel schedules an hourly cron event and runs:

• standard cleanup
• merged-branch cleanup
• scheduled app backups
• app backup retention pruning
• app deployment-history pruning
• expiring-environment reporting

Key config values

Scheduled app backups

If an app is a long-lived runtime target, it often deserves its own regular recovery points even when no sandbox deploy is happening.

Enable that flow:

$config = new \Rudel\RudelConfig();
$config->set( 'auto_app_backups_enabled', 1 );
$config->set( 'auto_app_backup_interval_hours', 24 );
$config->save();

Rudel will then create a scheduled backup for each app only when the most recent backup is older than the configured interval.

Retention

App recovery history can grow indefinitely if you never prune it. Retention settings let Rudel trim that state automatically:

$config = new \Rudel\RudelConfig();
$config->set( 'auto_app_backup_retention_count', 10 );
$config->set( 'auto_app_deployment_retention_count', 25 );
$config->save();

Backups and deployment records are pruned per app, newest first.

Expiry reporting

Some teams want cleanup to be aggressive. Others want a warning window first. expiring_environment_notice_days gives you that second option by surfacing upcoming expiries through the automation result and hook layer.

$config = new \Rudel\RudelConfig();
$config->set( 'expiring_environment_notice_days', 3 );
$config->save();

That does not delete anything by itself. It just reports what is close to expiry so your own code can notify owners or open tickets.

Running automation on demand

From PHP:

use Rudel\Rudel;

$result = Rudel::run_automation();

You can still call Rudel::run_scheduled_cleanup() for backward compatibility, but Rudel::run_automation() is the more accurate name now because it runs the full maintenance pipeline.

Hooks

Automation is designed to be integrated rather than hidden. The main hooks are:

• rudel_before_automation_cleanup
• rudel_after_automation_cleanup
• rudel_before_automation_app_backups
• rudel_after_automation_app_backups
• rudel_before_automation_app_retention
• rudel_after_automation_app_retention
• rudel_after_automation_expiring_environments

See Hooks for the broader extension contract.