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Custom routines
The built-in routines cover common jobs. When you want a multi-step job of your own — "every Monday, pull our prices, check three competitors, and flag anything we're beating" — you don't fill out a form. You describe it to your Personal Assistant in chat, and it writes the routine for you. From then on the custom routine sits alongside the built-in ones, with a Custom badge, and runs exactly the same way.
In the app
Start one from the + New routine button — it's at the top of the Routines tab on the lobby hero and on the cross-agent Tasks page. It opens a chat with your Personal Assistant with the request prefilled.
Prefer to write it yourself?
Every custom routine is a small YAML document you can also edit directly in a built-in text editor — click the Edit button on a custom routine's card. For the full schema, field-by-field reference, and worked multi-step examples, see Routine YAML reference. This page covers the conversational path; that one is the power-user reference.
How you create one
Custom routines are created by chatting, not configured in a builder.
Click + New routine. It opens (or points the message box at) your Personal Assistant and prefills a starter line:
Create a routine for me: [describe what it should do, how many steps, and whether anything needs my approval]
Replace the bracketed part with what you want in plain language — the steps, the order, and where you want to be asked before anything is sent or published.
The assistant writes up the routine (it calls this a recipe), tells you what it built, and saves it. It appears immediately with a Custom badge in your Routines list.
You never touch a form, a config file, or code — you talk, and the assistant writes the recipe.
Say where you want an approval
If a step sends a message, publishes a page, or changes live data, tell the assistant you want to approve it first. It puts an approval gate there, so the routine pauses and shows you exactly what it's about to do before that step runs.
What a custom routine can be
| Property | The limit |
|---|---|
| Steps | 1 to 8, run in order (a straight line — one step after another) |
| Approval gates | Any step can pause for your approval before it runs |
| Early exit | A step can bail out early with a friendly note (e.g. "No product data connected yet") instead of pushing on with nothing to work with |
| How many | Up to 10 custom routines per account |
Each step is handled by one of your agents (the assistant picks a sensible one — a text specialist for writing, the Sales Platform Wizard for catalog and lead work, and so on), and each step can build on what the previous step produced.
Safe by default when unattended
Any step without an approval gate is automatically held to read-and-draft work — it won't send messages, place calls, run outreach, or publish live changes on its own. Anything that touches the outside world only happens behind an approval gate you click. So a custom routine can run on a schedule without doing something irreversible while you're away.
Managing a custom routine
A custom routine's card has an Edit button and a ⋮ "Manage routine" menu. (Built-in routines have neither — that's how you tell them apart: they're view-only.)
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Edit (button) | Opens the routine in the built-in YAML editor — change any field as text, add approval gates, and manage its schedules and triggers in the Automations panel below the editor. Save validates before it takes. Full guide: Routine YAML reference. |
| Turn on / Turn off (⋮ menu) | Pause a routine without deleting it. A turned-off routine shows a Turned off badge and its Run button is disabled — and its schedules and triggers quietly pause too, until you turn it back on. |
| Edit with assistant (⋮ menu) | Opens a chat with your Personal Assistant, prefilled with "Update my routine … : [describe what should change]" — you edit by describing the change, same as you created it. |
| Delete (⋮ menu) | Removes the routine. Your conversation with it stays in your chats; only the routine definition goes — along with any schedules and triggers attached to it. |
On the global Tasks page and the lobby
There's no per-agent view-swap there, so a custom routine's Edit as text lives inside the ⋮ menu (it opens the same YAML editor in a dialog). On an agent's own Tasks tab it's the visible Edit button instead.
If a routine shows an error
If the assistant's recipe has a problem (a step that references something that doesn't exist, for instance), the card shows the error in red and its Run button is disabled until it's fixed. Use Edit with assistant and describe the fix, or open Edit and correct the YAML directly.
Running, watching, approving
Once created, a custom routine behaves exactly like a built-in one: press Run (which prefills the start message — you send to begin), watch the steps tick off live in the Activity panel, read per-step results, approve any gated step in the conversation, and stop gracefully. Each step draws from your agents balance and shows up on the Usage page. Everything on the Routines page applies.
Starting it automatically
A custom routine doesn't have to wait for you to press Run. Put it on a schedule to run on a clock, or attach a trigger so it starts the moment something happens — a form submission hitting a secret link, or an event in a connected app like a Stripe payment or a new Gmail email (app-event triggers).
You set both up in either place, and they stay in sync:
- The Automations panel on the routine's editor (its Edit button → Automations) — Add schedule or Add secret link right there. A new trigger shows its copyable URL immediately.
- By chatting — and the assistant can do it all in one message: "Create a routine that summarizes new leads every Monday at 9am" builds the routine and attaches the schedule in a single step. Ask it later to "add a trigger to that routine" or "run it every morning" and it wires that up too.
You can also write a schedule straight into the YAML — see the schedules: block in the YAML reference. (Triggers are managed in the panel, not the YAML, because the link is a secret — the YAML just shows them as a read-only comment.)
Try it
- Click + New routine on the lobby's Routines tab.
- In the Personal Assistant chat, describe a small two- or three-step job — e.g. "Create a routine: step 1, summarize my new leads from the last 7 days; step 2, draft a short follow-up for each — ask me to approve before it drafts."
- When the assistant confirms it built the routine, open your Routines and find the new card with its Custom badge.
- Press Run, send the start message, and approve the drafting step when it pauses.
- Click the card's Edit button to open the YAML editor. Scroll to Automations and add a schedule (e.g.
0 9 * * 1for every Monday at 9am), then Save. - Open the ⋮ menu and try Turn off, then Turn on again.
See also
- Routine YAML reference — build and edit routines as YAML: the full schema and worked examples
- Routines — how running, progress, approvals and stopping work (all the same here)
- Triggers — start your routine automatically when something happens
- Your team & the agent library — the agents a routine's steps can run on
- Tasks & schedules — saved prompts and timed runs
- Usage & billing — how routine steps bill