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Schedule any Adapt query to run automatically — on a recurring cadence, or once at a specific future time. Each execution runs in a fresh chat with your integration access, and results land wherever you want them: a Slack DM, a Slack channel, or the web app. If you find yourself asking the same question every Monday morning, stop doing that.

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How it works

Describe the automation in plain English — the same way you’d ask it manually. Adapt parses the schedule, confirms it back to you, and starts running it on its own.
Each execution starts a brand-new chat. The automation has no memory of prior runs — if you want it to compare against last week, say so in the prompt, and Adapt will pull the prior data itself.

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Creating an automation

Two ways in, both plain English:
  • From any chat — just say it. “Every Monday at 9am, summarize last week’s closed deals and post it to #sales.”
  • From the Automations page — click New automation. Adapt opens a chat headed What would you like to automate? with the composer pre-filled with Create an automation that. Finish the sentence.
Under the composer, three groups of prompt examples — Recurring, One-time, and Event-based — show what good automations look like. Open a group and pick one to run it as a starting point, then refine it in the same chat. Adapt's create-automation screen asking "What would you like to automate?" with Recurring, One-time, and Event-based prompt examples listed below the composer

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Schedule types

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Recurring automations

Daily, weekly, monthly, or any custom cadence. Describe it in plain language or use a cron expression.

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One-time automations

Schedule something to run once at a specific future moment:

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Event-based automations

Trigger a run from an outside system instead of the clock. Describe the trigger and Adapt creates a webhook, then gives you the URL and credentials to paste into the sending service.
Every request the webhook receives shows up in its event history on the webhook’s page.

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Connecting the sending service

Open the webhook and click Connect. The dialog gives you the credentials in whichever shape the sending service accepts:
  • URL secret — one ready-to-paste URL with the secret in the query string: https://app.adapt.com/api/webhook/custom/{webhookId}?secret={secret}. Use this for services that only let you enter a URL and can’t add headers, like Grain, Resend, or Typefully. Adapt also accepts the secret in an access_token or token parameter if the provider fixes the name.
  • Basic auth — the connection URL, a username, and a password as separate fields, sent as a standard HTTP Basic Authorization header. Use this for callers you control: curl, scripts, or internal tooling.
Pick one. Sending any Authorization header turns off the query-string secret, so a request with a bad header fails rather than falling back to the URL secret.
The secret stays masked in the dialog. Adapt fetches the plaintext only when you copy it or reveal it, and drops it when you close the dialog. Regenerate secret issues a new one and invalidates the old one immediately, so update any service already pointed at the webhook. Webhooks created before Adapt stored a retrievable copy show “Secret is no longer readable” — regenerate to get a working secret.

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Rate limits and responses

Each webhook accepts a set number of requests per window — 1 request per 60 seconds by default. Change it by asking Adapt, or in the webhook’s settings. Adapt responds as soon as it accepts the payload and runs the prompt afterward, so a 200 means the payload was received, not that the run has finished.

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Cron expressions

For precise control, Adapt accepts standard 5-field cron expressions (minute hour day month weekday). The minimum interval between recurring runs is 15 minutes. Times are interpreted in your account’s timezone.

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Delivery options

Choose where results land:
  • Slack DM — Direct message from the Adapt bot
  • Slack channel — Post to a specific channel (name the channel in your prompt)
  • New chat — Results appear as a new conversation in the web app
If you don’t specify a destination, results post wherever you scheduled the automation from. Automations scheduled inside a Slack thread will reply in that thread by default; automations scheduled in the web app create a new chat.

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Result delivery

Every automation also carries a result delivery setting that can send the finished result somewhere other than the channel it was created in: Email and Messages deliver to the person who created the automation, so they’re best for automations you run for yourself. Both have prerequisites:
  • Email — your account email must be verified.
  • Messages — your phone must be connected under Settings > Integrations > Messaging, and you need an existing text thread with Adapt. If you delete that thread, the destination goes unavailable; text Adapt once to bring it back.
Set it from the automation’s page — the delivery selector sits in the header next to the status control — or ask in any chat:
The selector shows what each destination resolves to (a masked phone number for Messages, “Not connected” when it isn’t set up) and blocks anything that can’t receive. Only the automation’s creator and org owners and admins can change the setting. If a destination becomes unavailable between runs, Adapt falls back to the original channel rather than dropping the result. New automations also inherit the delivery destination of the chat they were created in. If you’ve routed a chat to your email, automations you schedule from it default to email. See Result delivery.

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Visibility

Each automation is either private or shared:
  • Private — Only you can see the chats the automation creates. Useful for personal reminders, inbox triage, or anything tied to your own credentials.
  • Shared — Chats created by the automation are visible to your whole organization. Useful for team standups, exec reports, or any automation whose output the team should be able to read, fork, and follow up on.
Automations inherit the visibility of the chat you scheduled them from. To change it, just ask:

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Permissions

Automations run with the same integration permissions as your account at the moment they execute. If you disconnect HubSpot or lose access to a Slack channel, any automation that depends on it will fail or skip that step on its next run. For automations the whole team relies on, schedule them from an account whose integration access is unlikely to change.

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Managing your automations

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View your automations

You can also browse and manage all of your automations under Automations in the left nav of the web app. Search by name or prompt, filter by creator, visibility, or type, and sort by Newest, Last run, Top usage (30 days), or Top usage (all time).

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See past runs

Click any automation to open its Run history — every execution Adapt has fired for that automation, with start time, title, status, and the credits that run cost. Open any row to jump into the chat Adapt produced for that run, with the full transcript, sources, and artifacts. The same page has a Details panel showing status, visibility, schedule, and creator, plus controls to edit or delete the automation. Per-run chats don’t appear in your main sidebar — only the chats you start directly do. This keeps high-frequency automations (every 15 minutes, hourly digests, overnight summaries) from drowning out your active work. Shared automation runs are visible to everyone in your org. Private automation runs are only visible to the person who created the automation.

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Track cost and usage

Every automation reports what it consumes, so a runaway cadence shows up before your invoice does. In the list — the Usage column shows credits consumed in the last 30 days, with the all-time total underneath. Automations that have never run read “No runs”. Sort by Top usage (30 days) or Top usage (all time) to put the heaviest spenders first. Scheduled tasks and webhooks are ranked together. On the automation — three figures sit above the run history: Per run — the Cost column in the run history shows credits for each individual execution, so one expensive run stands out from the routine ones. Open the row to see the chat behind it. Webhook event histories show credits per delivered event the same way. Credits map to spend the same way everywhere else in Adapt. See Usage-based pricing for how credits are calculated.

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Edit an automation

Automations aren’t write-once — change the schedule, the prompt, or the delivery target at any time. Ask in any chat, or open the automation and choose Edit, which starts a chat pre-filled with Edit automation "{name}" to for you to finish. Webhooks work the same way.

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Pause or cancel

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Pairing with skills and proactive Slack

Automations become much more powerful when combined with the rest of the platform:
  • Skills define how a recurring automation should be done — the playbook, the data sources, the format. Scheduling an automation that says “run the weekly-engaged-leads-by-source report and post it to #marketing” gives you a consistent, repeatable deliverable instead of a one-off summary that drifts in shape week over week.
  • Proactive Slack mode decides when Adapt should jump in based on what’s happening in a channel. Automations decide when Adapt should jump in based on the clock. They compose well: a daily 9am rollup of overnight incidents, plus a proactive policy in #incidents that wakes Adapt up the moment a new one lands.

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Example use cases

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Engineering

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Sales

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Customer success

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Competitive monitoring

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Exec reporting

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Limits

  • Minimum recurring interval: 15 minutes
  • One-time delay window: 60 seconds to 7 days in the future
  • Cron format: Standard 5-field expressions (minute, hour, day, month, weekday)
  • Permissions: Automations run with your account’s integration access at execution time

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Next steps

Slack App

Receive automation output in Slack

Skills

Turn one-off prompts into repeatable playbooks

Ask Questions

Learn how to query your data

Integrations

Connect data sources for richer scheduled output