Cron on the First Monday of Every Month

The cron expression 0 9 1-7 * 1 schedules a task to run at 9:00 AM on Monday, but only during the first seven days of each month, effectively targeting the first Monday.

Field-by-field breakdown:

• 0 (Minute): At minute 0. The task fires at the top of the hour.
• 9 (Hour): At hour 9 (9 AM). The task runs at the start of the business day.
• 1-7 (Day of Month): Days 1 through 7. This range covers the first week of the month, guaranteeing exactly one Monday falls within it.
• * (Month): Every month from January through December. No restriction on which month.
• 1 (Day of Week): Monday only. The value 1 represents Monday in standard cron.

Important note about cron semantics: In standard cron, when both Day of Month and Day of Week are specified (not *), the job runs when EITHER condition is true (OR logic), not when both are true (AND logic). This means this expression will run on ALL Mondays AND on days 1-7 regardless of day of week. To truly target only the first Monday, wrap your command with a check: [ "$(date +\%d)" -le 7 ] && your_command and use 0 9 * * 1 as the cron expression, or use the expression as-is and add a day-of-week check in your script. This expression is supported by standard cron on Linux/macOS, as well as cloud services like AWS CloudWatch, Google Cloud Scheduler, and GitHub Actions.