In this guide· 3 chapters
A routine is one agent on a cadence
Set it once. It gets on with it.
A routine is a single recurring job — one agent, one task, running on its own. It is the smallest unit of work that keeps happening without you: a morning brief, an inbox sweep, a dashboard kept current, a weekly review. One clear instruction, on a rhythm.
That is the whole difference from a workflow. A workflow is several agents handing work along in stages; a routine is just one of those stages, standing on its own. When one agent doing one job is all you need, a routine is the simplest way to set it running.
What a routine can produce
Every routine makes one kind of thing. You pick which when you set it up — and each has its own place it lands:
A note in your vault
It writes something and files it — a morning brief under Daily/, a weekly review, a research digest. There when you look.
A dashboard, kept current
It refreshes a saved view so the numbers are always up to date — spending this month, your training week, a pipeline.
A card in your 1Presence inbox
It surfaces something that needs you — a flagged email, a heads-up, a draft to approve — waiting quietly until you look.
You describe it, and choose when it runs
You set a routine up by talking — describe the job and 1Presence shapes it into a clean, self-contained instruction it can run unattended. You do not have to give it a schedule at all: a new routine runs on demand by default, whenever you tap Run now. It only runs on its own once you ask it to.
Create a routine
Every morning, write me a one-page brief: my calendar, my unread mail, anything urgent — file it under Daily/.
It shapes a routine that produces a vault note, and asks whether to run it on a schedule or just on demand.
Keep my spending dashboard current each week.
It sets up a routine that refreshes that dashboard, ready to arm to a weekly cadence when you say so.
Sweep my inbox each weekday and raise anything that needs me.
It creates a routine that files a card to your 1Presence inbox — running only when you turn the schedule on.
Give it a schedule, or refine it
Run the morning brief every weekday at 7am, my time.
It arms the schedule to that cadence and timezone; a preview shows exactly when it will next fire.
Change the weekly review to also include what I shipped.
It edits the routine’s instruction in place — the next run uses the new brief.
Pause the inbox sweep for now.
It stops future runs without deleting anything; resume it whenever you like.
A routine you build never turns itself on. It runs automatically only once you have explicitly given it a schedule — until then it waits for Run now. A Kit’s routines are the one exception: they arrive on the cadence the Kit names, shown on the install sheet before you confirm, and you can pause any of them.
How setting up a routine goes
- 1
Describe the job
Say what it should do and what it should make — a brief in your vault, a dashboard kept current, a card in your 1Presence inbox. One clear task.
- 2
Choose on demand, or a schedule
Leave it to run only when you tap Run now, or give it a cadence — daily, weekly, monthly — with the time in your own timezone.
- 3
Try it with Run now
Run it once by hand to see the result before you trust it to the schedule. Its run history keeps every run, with what it did.
- 4
Let it run
From then on it gets on with it. The result lands in the place you chose, and it pauses to your 1Presence inbox only if it genuinely needs you.
It runs unattended — and asks only when it must
Most of the time a routine simply does its job and leaves the result where you asked. But if it hits something only you can settle — a first-time permission to read a connected service, send, or write out — it stops and leaves a card in your 1Presence inbox, and once you grant it the routine runs again with that access in place.
Following a run, reading what it did, and answering what it asks for is its own subject — the runs and inbox guide covers it. This guide is about getting the routine set up in the first place.
If a run genuinely cannot be done — a connector is disconnected, a required input was not provided — it records a straight “couldn’t run, here’s why” rather than a false success, so you are never misled by an empty result.
It keeps an eye on its own work
The whole point of a routine is that you stop reading it — and that is also the risk. A job can keep succeeding while quietly going off: the summaries get thinner, more of what it tries errors, the result stops being the thing you set it up for. So every run is quietly compared with what that job looks like when it is going well, and a new routine gets time to settle in before anything is read into its runs. But if a routine genuinely starts producing less, taking far longer, or drifting from what you asked, you get told — in plain words, on the routine itself and in your 1Presence inbox — instead of finding out months later.
And it does not stop at telling you. The likely reasons are checked directly: has the connection to that account expired, has the file it reads each morning been moved, or is nothing wrong at all and there is simply more to get through than there used to be. When the answer is a small, safe, specific fix — pointing back at a file that demonstrably moved — it is written out in full and offered to you as a single tap, next to what it says now. Changes to the instructions you wrote always wait for your yes. And after any fix, the next few runs are checked against how the routine used to work, so you are told honestly whether it helped — with a one-tap undo if it did not.
A routine that fails night after night is paused rather than left failing into the dark — it keeps its schedule, and a card in your 1Presence inbox explains why, with one tap to start it again. When a change was one you meant, you can say so, and from then on that is the new normal.
When a routine wants to become a workflow
A routine is one step. The moment a job wants more than one — a researcher who gathers, then a drafter who writes, then a check before it lands, or a human yes partway through — it is really a workflow, not a routine. Describe the job and 1Presence lays out the stages; the routine you started with stays as it is. Start with the simplest thing that works, and reach for stages only when the work wants them.
The simplest automation
One job, off your plate, for good.
Pick a single thing you do on a rhythm — the morning brief, the Friday tidy — hand it to an agent, and set it running. A routine is the smallest, easiest way to make something just keep happening.
Common questions
Q What is the difference between a routine and a workflow?
A routine is one agent doing one job on a cadence — a single step. A workflow is several agents handing work along in stages. A routine is the smallest thing that runs on its own; when a job wants stages, build a workflow. More on workflows.
Q Will a routine start running on its own the moment I set it up?
Not one you build. A new routine runs only when you tap Run now, until you explicitly give it a schedule. A routine that came with a Kit arrives on the cadence its install sheet showed you. Either way, you can pause a scheduled routine any time.
Q Where does a routine put its result?
Wherever you chose when you set it up: a note in your vault, a dashboard it keeps current, or a card in your inbox. Every run is also kept in the routine’s run history, with what it did.
Q What happens if a routine cannot finish?
It records a straight “couldn’t run, and here’s why” — a missing input, a disconnected connector — instead of a false success, and if it needs a decision from you it pauses and waits in your 1Presence inbox. See runs and the inbox.
Q Will I find out if a routine quietly gets worse?
Yes. Each run is compared with what that routine looks like when it is going well — its own settled runs, not a generic ideal. If the work genuinely changes for the worse, you get a plain-language note naming what shifted and, where possible, why — an expired connection, a moved file — sometimes with a specific fix you can approve in one tap. Changes to the instructions you wrote always wait for your approval.