Get access
All resources

Guide · 4 min read

Set up routines

Put recurring work on autopilot, like a weekly digest or a backlog sweep. Choose when it runs, which machine runs it and where the result goes.

The weekly digest and the backlog review are the first things to slip when the team gets busy. A routine gives that work a schedule and a machine to do it, even when everyone’s laptop is shut.

Write the instruction once, choose where the result goes, and read the first few runs. Then tweak it until it’s something your team looks forward to.

Set one up

Open the Machines key in the dock (the robot), pick Routines and press New routine. There are five fields:

  • Name: what the team calls it. It’s also its slash command.
  • What it should do: the instruction, written the way you’d write to a teammate.
  • When: weekdays, every day, some days, every hour, every few minutes (15 is the minimum) or only by hand. Some days lets you pick any days, with one time for all of them or a different time each day, like Monday and Thursday at 09:00, or every weekday but Wednesday. Times follow the routine’s own timezone, so 09:00 stays 09:00 when the clocks change.
  • Machine: which machine runs it, once you have more than one.
  • Posts in: the machine’s own room in chat (the default, shared by the whole team), a channel or a doc.

Or just ask a machine in chat: “every weekday at 9, post a short competitor brief”. It sets the routine up as soon as you press Allow on its card.

The Monday digest, as the form holds it.

Run it any time with a slash command

A routine called “Weekly digest” runs whenever anyone types /weekly-digest in chat. Rename the routine and the command follows.

The command uses the same instruction, machine and model, and answers in a thread. It leaves the schedule and the run history alone, which makes it the perfect way to test a new instruction.

Five to try

  • Monday digest, 09:00, in #general. “Post what shipped last week, what is stuck, and who is waiting on whom.” Great when the team needs one shared update a week.
  • Stale sweep, weekly. “Find tasks in progress with no activity for ten days. Comment on each one asking the assignee whether it is still live.” It doesn’t report the problem, it sends the nudge.
  • Backlog tidy-up, weekly, in its machine’s room. “Look for duplicates and tickets that no longer make sense, and leave a comment on each rather than closing anything.” A routine that changes things should almost always suggest rather than decide.
  • Docs check, weekly. “Read the pages under Runbooks against the last month of commits and flag the ones that describe something we no longer do.”
  • Support digest, daily. “Group yesterday’s #support messages by theme and post the three biggest, with links.”
Each one reads like a sentence: when, who runs it, and where it posts.

Be specific about the result

Say what to post, not just what to look at. “Summarise the week” gets you an essay. “At most eight bullets, newest first, each naming a person and a task code” gets you something people actually read. Name the places too: “read #ship and the tasks moved to Done”, not “review recent activity”.

A routine can also stay quiet when there’s nothing to say. “Only post when a deploy fails” is a fine instruction, and a quiet run still counts as a good one.

Keep what it reads small. How much of the workspace a run reads isn’t on the form, so ask the routine’s machine to trim it to a short summary or to nothing at all. Frequent runs that read a big workspace can use a lot of credits.

If a routine fails three times in a row, it switches itself off. Its page shows what went wrong, so you can fix it and switch it back on.

Start it from somewhere else

A routine doesn’t need a clock. It can also start from a webhook, like a deploy finishing, a form or a Zapier step, from another routine, or from Run now. Chain a few together, up to four deep: one gathers, the next writes it up. Its page shows the webhook address, the settings and every run.

One gathers, the next writes it up. Only the last one talks to people.

Keep the ones that earn their place

Every so often, pause or delete the routines nobody reads. If a digest is too long or comes too often, trim it. Sometimes one well-kept doc beats another post in a channel.

Need a hand? Ask in the shared channel with our team, or write to [email protected].