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A c5.metal instance costs ~$4.08/hr. Leaving it running 24/7 is expensive for development and testing.

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Automated scheduling with cron.sh

To automatically start the instance at 8 AM ET and stop at midnight ET on weekdays: 
cd infra
bash cron.sh

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What cron.sh creates

1

Elastic IP

Allocates an Elastic IP for stable addressing across stop/start cycles. Updates infra/.instance with the EIP.
2

IAM role

Creates nightshift-lambda-role with EC2 start/stop permissions scoped to instances tagged nightshift-dev.
3

Lambda functions

Creates nightshift-start and nightshift-stop
4

Scheduler IAM role

Creates nightshift-scheduler-role with lambda:InvokeFunction permission.
5

EventBridge Scheduler rules

Schedules in America/New_York timezone:
  • Start: cron(0 8 ? * MON-FRI *) — 8:00 AM ET, Monday–Friday
  • Stop: cron(0 0 ? * TUE-SAT *) — 12:00 AM ET, Tuesday–Saturday
After running cron.sh, use the Elastic IP for all connections instead of the ephemeral public IP.
The Lambda functions find instances by tag (Name: nightshift-dev), not by hardcoded instance ID, so they continue to work if you reprovision.