For webapps which are accessed as web pages or through API, looking at the API activity will indicate whether the app is being actively used. Clace currently uses no new API calls with last 3 minutes as indicating idleness. This is aggressive, it can be tuned as required https://clace.io/docs/container/config/. For apps using websockets or server-sent events, the API activity check will not be accurate.

For background jobs and cron jobs, some kind of cron job can be defined in the app, to wake up the container. This is not supported currently. If an app has background jobs or idle check is not accurate, the auto-pause can be disabled.

Right, I am suggesting a feature to disable the idleness check during a window of the day

This could be done using a system cron job which runs

  clace app update-metadata conf --promote container.idle_shutdown_secs=180 /myapp

at every 6pm and then runs

  clace app update-metadata conf --promote container.idle_shutdown_secs=0 /myapp

at 8am. idle_shutdown_secs being zero disables the shutdown. Using all as the last arg will update for all apps.