Set one job to run on its own.

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.

Every routine makes one kind of thing. You pick which when you set it up — and each has its own place it lands:

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.

A routine never turns itself on. It runs automatically only once you have explicitly given it a schedule — until then it waits for Run now. That way nothing starts happening on its own that you did not ask for.

1. 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 inbox. One clear task.

2. 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. 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. 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 inbox only if it genuinely needs you.

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 missing detail, a first-time permission to send or write out — it pauses and leaves a card in your inbox, then carries on once you answer.

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 an honest “couldn’t run, here’s why” rather than a false success, so you are never misled by an empty result.

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. The good news is that the machinery is the same: a routine grows into a workflow by adding a stage. Start with the simplest thing that works, and let it grow only when the work does.