Routines

A Routine is a standing job: a particular Worker running a particular prompt, automatically, whenever its trigger fires. Where a Plan is a one-off project, a Routine is the thing you set up once and let run again and again — your “every weekday at 8am, summarize the overnight inbox” worker.

The three ingredients

Every Routine is just three choices:

1. Who — the worker that runs.
2. What — a prompt template, the instruction it runs each time.
3. When — the trigger that sets it off.

The triggers

• Cron — a schedule, like “every hour” or “weekdays at 9am”. Cron-flavoured routines are registered the moment the app boots (and whenever you enable one), so they fire on time without you touching anything.
• Watch folder — fires when a file lands in a folder you’re watching. Drop a PDF in, the worker processes it.
• Webhook — fires when an outside system calls a secret URL. Wire askTheodor into a tool like Zapier or n8n.
• Manual — no automation; you run it on demand with a click.

Running unattended

Because routines fire on their own, they’re built to run without you present — including on a headless, always-on machine (no window, no screen). A dedicated runner keeps the cron schedule alive and dispatches each job when its moment comes, so your morning digest is ready before you sit down.

The same guardrails apply as everywhere else: a routine can flag certain tools to wait for your approval before firing, and you can even require multiple sign-offs in order (say “Legal” then “Finance” then “CEO”) for sensitive steps. See Budgets & approvals.

Where Routines live

Routines are grouped under their Company in the app, with an “Unassigned” bucket for any that don’t belong to one. Each remembers when it last ran and whether that run succeeded.

Cron, in plain words

A cron expression is a compact way to write a schedule. You don’t have to memorize the syntax — the app shows a human-readable version (“every day at 08:00”) alongside it.

Routine vs Plan

Reach for a Routine when the same job repeats on a schedule or trigger. Reach for a Plan when you have a one-time effort with several dependent steps. They complement each other.

In practice

Start with one, and read its output daily for two weeks. A routine nobody opens is spending tokens to produce something unread. If you can’t bring yourself to read it after a fortnight, delete it — that’s a useful result, not a failure.

Write the prompt so the output is usable as-is. Compare “summarise this week” with “summarise what got done, what slipped and why, and next week’s top three — written as an update I could forward to a client without editing.” The second constraint forces a completeness and tone the first never produces.

Match the trigger to how the work actually arrives. Time-based work (a morning brief, a Friday report) wants cron. Work that arrives as files wants a watch folder — it fires when the file lands rather than when you next remember. Work triggered by another system wants a webhook. If none of those fit, it’s probably a task, not a routine.

Cron routines need the app running. They register at boot and fire on schedule while askTheodor is open; for genuine overnight operation you want the background daemon, or a Team-Hub on a machine that doesn’t sleep. A laptop that closes at 6pm won’t run an 08:00 routine unattended.

Check last run when a routine goes quiet. Each one records its last run and whether it succeeded — that’s the first place to look before assuming the schedule is wrong.

🎓 Learn it hands-on: Routines: work on a schedule

Terms in this page

• Routine — a standing job: one worker plus one prompt template that runs whenever its trigger fires.
• Worker / persona — the configured AI character the routine runs; see Workers.
• Prompt template — the saved instruction a routine runs each time it fires.
• Trigger — what sets a routine off: cron, watch folder, webhook, or manual.
• Cron / cron expression — a schedule (and its compact text form) for time-based runs; the app also shows it in plain English.
• Watch folder — a directory the app monitors; a new file there fires the routine.
• Webhook — a secret URL an outside system can call to fire the routine.
• Headless / runner — running with no visible window (e.g. on a server); a background runner keeps routines firing there.
• Approval (and stages) — a routine can pause for your sign-off on flagged tools, optionally requiring several approvals in order; see Budgets & approvals.
• Plan — a one-off multi-step project, as opposed to a repeating routine; see Plans.