Automations

An automation runs a multi-agent chat turn for you on a schedule or when an event fires. Think of it as a saved prompt with a trigger: a recurring competitor brief, a daily inbox digest, a weekly report — the automation runs the agent task and the result lands in the workspace (and notifies you) without a person in the loop.

What you get

• Steps that run agent tasks — the built-in agent_task action executes a multi_agent_chat turn from each step, with the same tools, connectors, and permissions as a chat.
• Schedule triggers — preset recurrence (daily/weekly/...) or a raw cron expression, evaluated in the automation's timezone.
• Event triggers — subscribe to the domain event bus and fire when a published event matches your JSON filter.
• Runs and per-step results — every execution is persisted with status, step-level results, and a run history you can inspect from the automation detail page.
• Unattended mode — run without a user present, so approval-required steps either run or are skipped according to the workspace policy.
• Create from chat — the main agent has a create_automation tool that drafts the automation from a plain-English intent, shows a HITL approval card, and persists it once you approve or edit the draft.

Permissions

Automations are workspace-scoped and gated by the AUTOMATIONS_READ, AUTOMATIONS_CREATE, AUTOMATIONS_UPDATE, and AUTOMATIONS_DELETE permissions. Members without them don't see the section or the runs.

How to enable

Automations ship with the product — there is no feature flag to turn on. They rely on the normal background infrastructure: Redis (the Celery broker) and celery_beat, which are part of both the Docker Compose stack and the manual installation.

Where in the UI

• Workspace sidebar → Automations (/dashboard/<workspace_id>/automations) — list, status, triggers summary, and per-row actions.
• New / Edit automation (.../automations/new, .../automations/<id>/edit) — the builder: basics, schedule (preset or cron), tasks, model fields, JSON mode, unattended toggle.
• Automation detail (.../automations/<id>) — definition, triggers, runs, run details with plan steps and step results.

Related references

• Backend: surfsense_backend/app/automations/ (API, dispatch, persistence, built-in agent_task action).
• Chat tool: create_automation in the main agent's tools.
• PRs and tests: the feature arrived with the upstream sync (#114 / #115); frontend coverage and regression passes: #1090, #676.