Schedule a routine

A routine is an agent that runs on a schedule in one brain: a weekly digest, a check for stale pages, stand-up prep. It follows instructions kept in that brain, and acts as the member who owns it.

You need the Write role or above. An admin can limit routines to admins and the owner.

Create a routine

1. Select Routines in the sidebar, then New routine.
2. Choose the brain it works in.
3. Give it a name, such as weekly-digest: lowercase letters, numbers and hyphens.
4. Set the schedule as a cron expression, in UTC. 0 9 * * 1 runs at 09:00 UTC every Monday.
5. Under Connections this routine may use, tick any connected tool it needs, such as Linear. Nothing is ticked by default.
6. Select Add.

ako creates the routine's instructions file in the brain's routines/ folder, and you become its owner.

Tell it what to do

Open the routine's file in routines/ and write its instructions in plain language, as you would to a colleague. For example:

Every Monday, read last week's changes in decisions/ and projects/. Write a short digest to digests/ with what changed, who changed it, and anything that looks out of date.

routines/ is protected, so a change to a routine's instructions is approved by a person before the next run uses it.

Try it first

Each routine has two buttons:

• Shadow run: runs it as a preview. Everything it would write becomes a proposal you can read, then keep or discard. Nothing lands in the brain on its own.
• Run now: runs it for real, exactly as a scheduled run would. It doesn't move the next scheduled run.

Expand a routine to see its run history, and select Review on a shadow run to see what it proposed.

Ask the assistant for one

Ask in a chat, for example "Set up a routine that writes a weekly digest of this brain". The assistant proposes it, and the proposal waits under Proposals. Approving it creates the routine with you as its owner.

Ownership

A routine acts as its owner, with their access, and never approves its own changes. If its owner leaves, loses access to the brain, or moves below Write, the routine pauses. An admin can give it a new owner and switch it back on.

Use the switch on a routine to turn it off and on. The owner and admins can do this.