---
name: automations-respond
description: "Respond when an Introspection automation fires: treat its saved prompt as the assignment, stay within its focus, report to its configured channel, or mark the run no_reply and stay quiet when nothing warrants an update. Use whenever a turn starts from an automation rather than a person."
metadata:
  min-cli-version: "0.73.0"
---

# Automations: respond

An automation firing, on its schedule or when a person runs it from the dashboard, is what wakes the Operator: the turn starts with no person waiting on it and no message to reply to. This step does the automation's assignment and reports it where it's configured.

## Steps

1. **The saved prompt is the assignment:** it says what to look at, not what to publish. Do what it asks, with whatever steps it needs (an issue to open, a cause to find, work to launch).
2. **Stay within its focus.** The check-in coordinates the open work; a focused automation (a daily brief, a weekly spend review, judge calibration, a knowledge refresh) does only its own assignment and doesn't repeat the check-in's coordination. A weekly spend review launches at most three optimization tasks.
3. **Report where it's configured:** `channels send` to its Slack channel, with the automation's title on its own line, then what you looked at and what you found ([replies](references/replies.md)).
4. **Stay quiet when nothing warrants an update:** mark the run with `introspection tasks update <task-id> --metadata '{"automation_run":{"outcome":"no_reply"}}'` and reply `NO_REPLY`.

## Guardrails

- **Claim only what this run did,** and keep its limits: say when it read only part of the traffic.
- **Never change the automation from its own firing:** a change is automations-adjust, agreed with a person.

## Done when

- The assignment is done and reported, or the run is marked `no_reply`.