Most uptime tools ping a public URL. Gonewatch does the opposite: your job pings us. I built it after a nightly database backup failed silently — the script never started, so it never emailed me. You create a monitor, paste a curl (or uses: gonewatch/heartbeat@v1) at the end of a successful run. If the next heartbeat never arrives, you get a Down email. Paid plans can post to Slack and remind you if it stays Down.
I used to hardcode a ping that only fired after the database backup finished. If the ping never showed up, the dump didn't happen — the job itself never emailed me.
Gonewatch is that pattern: POST a URL when the job succeeds. If the next one never comes, you get emailed. Cron, backups, scheduled GitHub Actions, same trick. Curl or uses: gonewatch/heartbeat@v1. Free to start.
Would love feedback from anyone who has had a cron fail silently.