Automate Recurring Work
Turn a repeatable prompt into a manual, scheduled, or GitHub-triggered automation.
Automations are best for work that has a clear trigger and a repeatable finish line: check something, summarize something, fix a narrow class of problem, or prepare a report.
Some controls may be behind Settings -> Experiments while the feature is in preview.
1. Start with a manual run
- Open Automations.
- Create a new automation.
- Choose the environment: project, workspace, new workspace, or standalone.
- Write a narrow prompt with the expected output.
- Run it manually with Run now.
- Inspect history, terminal output, artifacts, and status.
Do not schedule a prompt until one manual run produces the result you expect.
2. Choose the trigger
| Trigger | Good default |
|---|---|
| Manual | Keep for jobs that need human judgment before each run |
| Hourly/Daily/Weekly/Monthly | Use for recurring maintenance, reports, or checks |
| Cron | Use when the built-in schedule options are not precise enough |
| GitHub | Use when PRs, issues, comments, pushes, labels, or workflow runs should start work |
Scheduled automations use the timezone configured in the trigger.
3. Filter GitHub triggers
GitHub triggers can filter by repository, event, action, issue label, GitHub user, comment text, branch, workflow name, and workflow conclusion.
Use filters aggressively. A broad GitHub trigger can run far more often than expected.
4. Watch and adjust
Open run detail to review:
- status and timestamps,
- terminal output,
- background process state,
- artifacts,
- standalone conversation or workspace context.
Pause the automation while changing prompts or trigger filters. Re-enable it after a clean manual test.
Related
- Automations — feature overview.
- Agent Status Notifications — get notified when runs finish or fail.
- Atmos Computer — keep a machine online for scheduled and GitHub-triggered work.