Docs/Automations

Automations

Schedule recurring tasks, monitoring checks, and proactive agent behavior that runs on autopilot.

What Are Automations?

Automations let your AI assistant work in the background without you asking. Set up recurring tasks, scheduled checks, and proactive alerts — your agent handles the rest.

Every morning at 8 AM, your agent sends a briefing with your calendar, weather, and priorities
Every hour, check if the staging server is up and alert you if it's down
On Fridays at 5 PM, generate a weekly report of completed tasks and send it to Slack

Automations run silently in the background. You'll only hear from your agent when there's something worth your attention.

Scheduled Tasks (Cron Jobs)

Create tasks that run on a schedule using natural language or cron syntax:

You:
"Every weekday at 9 AM, summarize my unread emails and create tasks from anything urgent."
Agent:
Got it. I've set up a daily automation: "Email triage & task creation". It'll run Monday-Friday at 9 AM.

Your agent translates your intent into a schedule. You can also use cron expressions for precise control:

0 8 * * *Every day at 8:00 AM
0 */4 * * *Every 4 hours
0 17 * * 5Every Friday at 5:00 PM
0 0 1 * *First day of every month at midnight

Heartbeat Monitoring

Set up health checks that run periodically and alert you only when something breaks:

🌐
Website Uptime

Check if your site is up every 5 minutes. Get notified instantly if it goes down.

curl -I https://mysite.com
🔄
Git Status

Check for uncommitted changes in your repo every hour. Remind you to commit.

git status --porcelain
💾
Disk Space

Monitor available disk space. Alert when usage exceeds 85%.

df -h / | tail -1
📊
API Health

Ping your API's /health endpoint. Report if it returns an error.

curl /api/health

Heartbeat checks create a task only if they fail — otherwise they run silently. No noise, just alerts when you need them.

Proactive Agent Behavior

Your agent can take initiative and perform actions automatically when certain conditions are met:

🌤️
Weather-Based Alerts

"If it's going to rain tomorrow, remind me to bring an umbrella."

📧
Smart Email Filters

"If I get an email from my manager with 'urgent' in the subject, create a high-priority task."

📅
Pre-Meeting Prep

"30 minutes before any meeting, pull up relevant docs and summarize the agenda."

🚨
Error Monitoring

"Watch my app logs. If there's a spike in 500 errors, ping me on Slack immediately."

Your agent learns your preferences over time and suggests new automations based on repeated patterns.

Common Automation Examples

Here are popular automations Pinchr users set up:

☀️ Daily Morning Briefing

Calendar, weather, top priorities, unread messages

📬 Email Digest

Summarize unread emails, highlight action items

🔔 Slack Catch-Up

Summarize missed Slack messages from channels you follow

✅ Weekly Review

List completed tasks, archive old ones, suggest what to tackle next

🚀 Deploy Reminder

Check for pending PRs every Friday, remind to merge before weekend

💬 Meeting Notes

After each calendar event, ask if you want to log notes or action items

How to Create Automations

You can create automations three ways:

1. Just ask your agent

Say what you want in natural language. Your agent creates the automation and confirms the schedule.

"Every Monday at 9 AM, check my GitHub notifications and create tasks for any @mentions."
2. From the Automations page

Open Settings → Automations, click New Automation, and fill in the schedule and task description.

3. Promote a task to automation

Right-click any task and select Repeat this task. Your agent asks how often, then converts it to an automation.

Managing Automations

View and edit all automations from Settings → Automations:

  • Pause or resume automations without deleting them
  • Edit schedules, triggers, or descriptions
  • View logs of past executions and results
  • Set notification preferences (silent, notify always, notify on errors only)
💡

Pro tip: Start with fewer automations and add more as you see what's useful. Too many automations can create noise — focus on what saves you real time.

Need help setting up automations?

Ask your agent or reach out to our community.