Skills and routines: automate the repeat tasks
A skill is the “how”: a reusable method. A routine is the “when”: a schedule or an event that tells a Bot to run it. Get the skill right by hand first, then automate it.
Skills: save a method that works
A skill holds a task’s steps, decision rules, expected output and boundaries. Skills are available across your Bots, though a Bot still needs the right connection or sign-in to use one. In the desktop app you can reference a saved skill by typing a slash (/).
Three ways to create one:
- Ask after a success: “That worked. Save this as a skill called Monthly receipts.”
- Write it yourself in plain language.
- Teach by demonstration. In teach-a-task mode, you perform a browser task once while the Bot records the visible steps (up to about ten minutes, without microphone audio), then drafts a skill from it. Keep passwords and private details off the screen while recording.
What a good skill contains
- When to use it, and when not to
- The inputs and access it needs
- The steps in order, with decision rules (“if a receipt has no date, flag it”)
- How to check the result
- What to return, and where
- What needs your approval
Skill: Monthly receipts. Use on the 1st of each month. Search my connected inbox for receipts from the previous month. Add date, merchant, amount and category to the sheet “Receipts 2026” in my Drive. Flag anything without an amount. Return the total, the count, the top three categories and any flagged items. Never delete or forward email.
Routines: run it automatically
A routine tells one Bot when to run a workflow. It can run on a schedule, or start when something happens: an email arrives, a Slack message comes in, a developer tool like GitHub sends an event, or a webhook is called. Routines run in the cloud while your devices are off. You create one simply by asking.
| Type | Good for | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Scheduled | Regular reviews and summaries | “Every weekday at 8 AM, summarize today’s calendar.” |
| Email event | Reacting to a specific kind of message | “When an email from my insurer arrives, summarize it and draft a reply.” |
| Webhook | Connecting other services or devices | “When this URL is called, log the details to my sheet.” |
Every Sunday at 6 PM, run the Monthly receipts skill for this week’s receipts, update the sheet, and post a three-line summary here. Don’t send or delete anything. If the sheet can’t be opened, tell me instead of creating a new one.
Managing routines
You can review a Bot’s routines and recent runs, and pause, resume, test, edit or delete them. Where that lives in the app may vary by version. The simplest approach is to ask the Bot to list its routines or pause one. After a long period of inactivity, the app may ask whether to keep routines running and pause them if you don’t respond.
Rules for safe automation
- Automate preparation first: summaries, drafts and recommendations.
- Keep sending, buying, deleting and publishing behind an approval.
- Include a no-data rule: what to do if the source is empty or unavailable.
- Approvals requested by unattended work can expire if you don’t answer in time (after about ten minutes), and expired actions don’t run. Design routines so a missed approval is harmless.
- Re-test a skill by hand after a website redesign or connector change.
Next: The safety checklist.