Automations & buttons

Automations are rules that run actions when records change or on a schedule. Buttons run the same actions on a click. Open both from a database’s ⋯ menu → Buttons & automations.

Anatomy of a rule

When (trigger) → Only if (condition) → Then (actions)

• Triggers — record created · record changes (optionally scoped to one field, e.g. “when State changes”) · schedule (hourly / daily / weekly at HH:mm, server time).
• Condition — any filter the views support. For scheduled rules the condition is the selection: the rule runs over every matching record.
• Actions (shared with buttons) — set fields on this record · create a record (optionally linked back through a relation) · add a comment · update linked records · notify a person. Tokens: @me (rule creator), @today, @now; {Field Name} interpolates values into comment and title templates.

Recipes

Goal	Rule
Escalate urgent tickets	When State changes · only if State is Urgent · add comment “⚠️ {Title} needs eyes”
Auto-stamp start dates	When State changes · only if State is In Progress · set Started = @today
Close stale Done work	Every day at 03:00 · only if State is Done · set Archived ✓
Kickoff checklist on new client	When a record is created (Clients) · create a record in Tasks “Kickoff {Title}” linked back
Auto-assign triage	When a record is created · set Assignee = @me
Cascade project close	When a Project is marked Done · update linked records · set all its Tasks to Archived

Semantics worth knowing

• Attribution — runs act as the rule’s creator; activity shows their name on the changes.
• Loop guard — an automation’s own writes can trigger other rules at most one more hop (depth 2). Deeper cascades are skipped and logged, so a rule can never ping-pong forever.
• Auto-disable — 10 consecutive failures switch a rule off (with a banner); editing the actions or re-enabling resets the streak.
• Run log — every execution (ok / error / skipped) with duration is kept for 30 days.
• Dry run — test “would this run?” against a record without writing anything.
• CSV imports do not fire automations (mass-import safety).
• Scheduled rules process up to 500 matching records per tick and note truncation in the log.

Buttons, agents, and the API

Buttons expose the same action set as a one-click field on a record — and the MCP run_button tool lets an AI agent press them. Automations and buttons are the substrate the agentic layer builds on: triggers fire the work, and the activity log records what happened.