Running cron job on localhost using Whenever gem

Question

Currently I have a Ruby and Sinatra project in which I am trying to automate a task. I have followed all the installation steps for the Whenever gem and written a function in my schedule.rb file that looks like this:

set :output, "./cron_log.log"


every 1.minutes do
    command "ruby ./scripts/my_script.rb"
end

My project will eventually be deployed to a remote server, but I do not have access to that at the moment. Instead, I am testing it all by running it on my local machine using the command bundle exec shotgun -o 0.0.0.0 -p 9393. When I run it, none of the functions in my schedule.rb file are run. I ran a test by putting require './scripts/my_script.rb' at the top of the schedule.rb file. Whenever I run bundle exec whenever, that outside function will execute, but not the function inside the every block. I figured maybe it only works on a live server, so I ran the bundle exec shotgun -o 0.0.0.0 -p 9393 command to start my server on localhost but nothing in the schedule.rb file was called, including the outside function. I tried putting the command system("bundle exec whenever") in my authentication file, which gets activated every time a user loads the home page of my website, and the outside function in schedule.rb does get called, but the every function does not. Even if it did work like this, I don't want the file to get called every single time a user accesses the home page.

I also tried putting require './config/schedule' in the authentication file and that just completely breaks the website and gives this error message:

Boot Error

Something went wrong while loading config.ru
NoMethodError: undefined method `every' for main:Object

Here is part of the output when running the crontab -l command:

# Begin Whenever generated tasks for: /file_path_redacted/config/schedule.rb at: 2022-10-21 18:50:21 -0500
* * * * * /bin/bash -l -c 'ruby ./scripts/my_script.rb >> ./cron_log.log 2>&1'

# End Whenever generated tasks for: /file_path_redacted/config/schedule.rb at: 2022-10-21 18:50:21 -0500

So, my question is this: How and when is the schedule.rb file supposed to get called? And is it important that I deploy the project to the remote server for the cron job to work? Again, it is not possible for me to deploy it, as it must be fully working before being deployed. If it is possible to run on localhost, what am I doing wrong?