Automations
How an automation departs, what freezes when you edit it, what each run costs, and every reason one stops on its own.
Automate
An automation is a recurring order handed to an agent. It carries a title, instructions, a recurrence, a time zone, a model and an effort level.
One agent, several automations
The instructions field is what separates two automations handed to the same agent. The agent supplies the role. The automation supplies the order.
The agent cannot be changed afterwards. An order handed to another role is a different order, so it becomes a different automation.
It leaves as soon as it exists
A new automation is active immediately. There is no draft state and no arming step. The sweep that queues due work passes every fifteen minutes and will pick yours up at the next slot.
The same is true of an automation created from a card in the chat. Between the proposal and the first departure there is one click.
Recurrence
- Once only, on a date and time.
- Every day, at one time.
- Certain days of the week, at one time. At least one day always stays ticked.
Nothing fires on an event today. That setting is refused by name.
Time zone
The time zone belongs to the project, not to the agent. Only the owner changes it, and changing it rearms every schedule on the project. A zone the browser does not know blocks the save, because eight in the morning would mean nothing without it.
Clock changes are handled on the real calendar. A wall time that does not exist on a given night moves to the first valid minute, and the shift is announced on screen.
What departs, and when
Three timers drive the whole thing. A sweep every fifteen minutes queues what is due. A second timer wakes the runner every minute. A recovery pass runs every five minutes.
The editor previews the next five departures, searched over 370 days. An empty preview means the setting produces no departure at all, and the automation would never leave.
After an outage, at most the last missed occurrence is replayed. An automation silent for three days does not wake up sending three follow ups.
Version freeze
Changing the instructions, the schedule or the model writes a new version. Changing only the title does not. A queued run carries the version that left, and the runner executes that version, never today's.
So editing an automation while one of its runs is waiting does not change that run. Wait for the run, then edit.
When the agent is paused
Nothing leaves. A run already queued stops and does nothing. The same applies when the agent's version changed since the run was queued. The card carries the warning: its agent is paused, it will not leave.
Run now
The card offers a manual departure. It queues the work, and the agent picks it up within the minute. The confirmation states that the run spends credits, charged at actual cost once the work is finished.
It refuses when the automation is paused, archived, has no runnable version, or already has work running.
What a run costs
| Situation | What is charged |
|---|---|
| A run that finishes | Charged after the fact, at real cost. Nothing is held in advance. |
| A run that fails | Charged. A run that burns through its turns still consumed them. |
| A run stopped at its time ceiling | Nothing. The run returned nothing and was not charged. |
| A run resumed after an interruption | One resume at most. Its consumption adds to the total already recorded. |
| Balance too low when the bill lands | The work is kept and applied. The automation is paused. Top up, then resume it. |
| Above the spend cap | The run is charged, then that automation alone is suspended. Other automations of the same agent keep going. |
Limits
| What | Value |
|---|---|
| Title | 1 to 120 characters |
| Instructions | Required, 100 000 characters at most |
| Model turns per run | 10 |
| Time ceiling per run | 45 seconds |
| Spend cap per run | 0.30 dollars by default, 5 dollars maximum |
| Attempts after an interruption | 2 |
Read the ceiling and the turn count together. An automation is a short job. Write an instruction that finishes in a handful of steps, and split anything larger into two automations.
Every run starts from nothing
The editor says it above the field: every run starts from a fresh context, so write the whole instruction, not a reminder. Nothing carries over from last Monday except what memory holds.
When it stops on its own
One case ends the automation's mornings rather than one run. It fires when the agent declares tools, none of them has an executor, and no skill is served to it. The automation is suspended and marked as needing a look, instead of being queued again tomorrow.
Nothing was attempted and nothing was charged. The attempt is still written down: Run history shows a failed run carrying that reason, so you can read what was asked for.
Two other warnings appear on the card without stopping anything: its agent is paused, or its current version cannot be found.
If the screen says automations are not available yet
One message stands apart from all the others. It reads: automations are not available yet, their table does not exist in the database.
It means the database behind that workspace never received the automations migration. Nothing was deleted, and nothing you wrote is lost. No setting on the screen repairs it, so ask support rather than saving again.