Automations

Three-step builder — Trigger, Action, Delivery — to turn an ad-hoc question into a recurring brief, alert, or refresh.

Last updated 2026-05-09

An automation is something happens → Arcus does the thing → result lands somewhere. The builder walks you through it in three steps. No code, no DAG editor — just three forms.

This guide covers what each step is, the options at each, and patterns we see teams use.

The three steps

Step 1 — Trigger

What kicks the automation off. Pick one:

Schedule. A cron-style time. Most common — every weekday at 7am, first of the month, every Monday at 9am.
Threshold. When a metric crosses a number. Trigger when daily revenue drops below $10k.
Anomaly. When a metric deviates from its trailing baseline. Trigger when daily ad spend is more than 2σ above the 14-day mean.
Event. When something happens externally — a webhook arrives, a warehouse sync completes, a new finding is logged.
Data. When a sync into your warehouse completes (e.g. dbt run finished).

Each trigger has its own config: cron expression for schedule, metric + comparison + threshold for threshold, etc.

Step 2 — Action

What Arcus does when the trigger fires. Pick one:

Run thread. Re-runs a saved thread against fresh data. Use this when you want a refreshed brief.
Generate memo. Writes a new memo (a longer-form narrative summary) from a prompt and the current data.
Refresh dashboard. Rebuilds a saved dashboard's data.
Export destination. Pulls a saved thread's answer and routes it to a destination (see Step 3).
Append to thread. Adds a new turn to an existing thread, asking a follow-up.
Post webhook. Calls an external HTTPS endpoint with the action's payload.

Each action has its own config: which thread, which dashboard, what prompt.

Step 3 — Delivery

Where the result goes:

Thread. Stays inside Arcus as a new thread (or a turn on an existing one). Visible in your workspace.
Slack. Posts to a channel via the Pipedream proxy (see Embed a thread for embed-via-proxy details).
Email. Sends a formatted summary to one or more recipients.
Webhook. POSTs the structured payload to a URL you specify.
None. No external delivery — used when the action is the delivery (e.g. Refresh dashboard).

You can chain a single action to multiple deliveries — post to #cmo-brief and email me.

A complete example

The Monday paid-pulse brief.

Trigger: Schedule, every Monday at 8am.
Action: Run thread, with the saved thread "Last week's paid performance by channel".
Delivery: Slack to #growth-leadership, plus email to the CMO.

Build it once; it runs every Monday. The Slack message contains the narrative, a thumbnail of the chart, and a link back into Arcus for the full answer card.

A trigger you can't easily do elsewhere

Anomaly trigger.

Trigger: Anomaly, metric daily_revenue, baseline 14 days, sigma 2.
Action: Append to thread Daily revenue investigation.
Delivery: Thread (stays in Arcus, you investigate when you log in next).

This one quietly watches your revenue. When something's off — a 2σ drop, a 2σ spike — the agent logs a turn explaining what changed. You read it on your terms.

Test before activation

Every automation has a Test run button. Click it; Arcus simulates the trigger right now and runs the action and delivery against current data. The result lands in your workspace as a draft, marked TEST, before you commit to the schedule.

For schedule-based triggers, test runs use the configured schedule's parameters but skip the wait. For threshold/anomaly/event triggers, the test simulates the trigger condition.

Pause, edit, archive

From /app/automations, every automation has three actions:

Pause. Stop firing temporarily. Pinned at the top of the list with a red badge.
Edit. Reopen the wizard. Change anything. Save creates a new version.
Archive. Soft-delete. Removed from the active list, kept for audit.

Pausing is reversible — paused automations show their last successful run and the next scheduled run.

What to automate first

If you're new to automations, start with one of these. They take five minutes each and pay back forever.

The morning memo. Daily at 7am, Run thread of "What changed yesterday across the business?", deliver to Slack and email.
The board prep packet. Monthly on the 25th, Generate memo with a prompt that summarizes the month, deliver to a thread for review before sending.
Spend pacing alert. Every 6 hours, Threshold trigger on "campaign spend deviates from plan by ±20%", deliver to #growth-eng.

Branch and edit-rerun