Let your pages do the routine work.

An automation is a block in a page

The block is Markdown, so it syncs, exports and backs up with its page. In the page it shows as a card: what starts it, what it does, its status on this device, and Run now, Preview, Edit and Pause. Automations in the menu lists them all with their history.

```vellum-automation
id: 3f9a1c2e
name: Daily journal
enabled: true
trigger:
  schedule: { daily: "08:00" }
action:
  create_page: { title: "Journal {{date}}", notebook: Journal, body: "# {{date:dddd D MMMM}}" }
limits: { per_hour: 4, timeout: 60 }
```

Triggers and actions

• On a schedule: every few minutes, hours or days, daily at a time, or weekly on a day (the device’s local time).
• When pages change: a page is created or edited in a notebook, with a tag or in a database, or a database property changes (to a given value, if you like).
• When you capture: something shared to Vellum, a voice memo or a scan.
• By hand: Run now only.

• Run code cells: all of the page’s cells, or some by id; their outputs are saved as usual.
• Make a page from a template or text, with variables such as {{date}}, {{week}} and {{title}}; it skips, appends or makes another when the page exists.
• Add text to the end of a page.
• Set database values, plain or worked out by a formula, on up to 200 rows at a time.
• Ask the assistant to summarise or draft from pages into one page you name. It has no tools and writes nowhere else.

Nothing runs that you didn’t turn on

• Per device. An automation runs only on devices where you enabled it, exactly as it was when you did. A change from another device, an import, a restored backup or another automation shows “Changed, needs review” until you enable it again there.
• Network. Code cells run with only the sites the page may already reach on this device, and never with saved secrets. A request to any other site pauses the automation until you allow it.
• Limits. Each automation runs at most 12 times an hour and 100 times a day unless you set other limits, and one run at a time.
• No loops. An automation never starts from its own changes, and a chain of automations starting each other stops after 3.
• Pause all, Preview (what a run would do, without doing it) and a history of every run on this device.

When automations run

Automations run only while Vellum is open, in a tab or as the installed app, and only on devices where you enabled them.

• Catching up. A schedule that came due while Vellum was closed runs once when you next open it, not once for every time it was missed, and its history entry says how many times it was missed.
• Installed app on Android. Chrome for Android (and other Chromium browsers that allow periodic background sync for installed apps) may wake Vellum now and then; the browser decides when, at most a few times a day. Vellum can’t run automations then: your pages, cells and the assistant live in the app’s database, which only the open app can use. If you turned on notifications for automations, it shows one notification, “N automations are due”, and opening Vellum runs them. It only counts them: their names and pages are not in the notification.
• Elsewhere (desktop browsers, Safari, Firefox) nothing happens while Vellum is closed.

Vellum asks to show notifications only when you choose to be notified, when you enable a scheduled automation or with the switch in Settings → Automations, never when it starts.

Make your first automation

1. Open Automations

   Choose Automations in the menu, or “Open automations” in the command palette.

2. Pick a template

   Daily journal, Weekly review, Summarise captures, Database rollup, or a blank one.

3. Review it

   Check the trigger and the action, and use Preview to see what a run would do.

4. Save it

   Saving makes a page holding the block and enables it on this device. On your other devices, open the page and choose “Enable on this device”.

In the app

• Automations Make pages, run code or summarise captures on a schedule.

Questions