Skip to main content
About 15 minutes A routine is work Alpha runs on a timetable, even while its session is closed and the session’s machine is asleep. In this guide you connect Slack once, ask the agent for a weekly bookings summary, and let Alpha post it every Monday morning. If you want an app or an agent you build to call Slack instead, see Use integrations in your app. By the end of this guide you will have a routine called harbor-weekly-summary. Every Monday at 09:00 in your time zone, Alpha wakes the Harbor bookings session and runs a tested script that counts last week’s bookings. The script posts the summary to a Slack channel, and then the machine goes back to sleep. Nothing keeps running between Mondays.

​
Before you start

  • The Harbor bookings session, with bookings in its database. Step 1 of Add a database and sign-in moves Harbor’s bookings into the session’s own PostgreSQL, and the routine reads that database. A published app has a separate production database, which this routine doesn’t read.
  • A Slack workspace you can post in, and a channel for the summary. This guide uses #harbor-staff.
You don’t need a Slack app, a bot token or a server of your own. Alpha’s server keeps the clock, and your Slack sign-in stays with Alpha.
If Slack isn’t listed under Integrations, or the Routines page says “Routines are not enabled on this Alpha”, that feature isn’t turned on for your Alpha. Ask your administrator.

​
Set it up

1

Connect Slack

Click Integrations in the sidebar. On the Connectors tab, search for slack and open the Slack card. Click Sign in. A window opens on Slack’s consent page, where you approve the connection. That window then shows “Connected” and closes itself, and the card turns Active.In Slack’s panel, click Test connection. A green line with a tick and the time it took means Alpha reached Slack with your account. As the panel says, the connection “acts as you, in every session you own”. You connect once, and every session you own can use it. For other apps, see Connect an app.
2

Ask for the routine in the Harbor bookings session

Open the Harbor bookings session and send the prompt below. Ask in this session because a routine runs in the session that made it, with that session’s files, secrets and database. The prompt gives a day and a time but no time zone, so the agent asks for one.Alpha will:
  1. Write the summary as a script in the workspace, reading the session’s database.
  2. Post through your Slack connection. The script never holds a Slack token.
  3. Ask for your time zone in a question card, because 9:00 falls at a different moment in each zone.
New routine on the Routines page starts a new session only for the routine, on its own machine, without this session’s files or database. Use it for work that needs nothing from an existing session. Its Weekly summary starter is a Monday 9:00 prompt you can adapt.
3

Check the test post, then let it save

The agent runs the script once by hand and shows you the result before it saves anything. Open #harbor-staff in Slack and read the post. If a number looks wrong, tell the agent, and it fixes the script and tests it again.When the routine is saved, the card Routine harbor-weekly-summary saved appears in the transcript:The session’s Routines tab then opens beside the transcript.
4

Set Mondays at 09:00 in your time zone

You can check or change the timetable without asking the agent. In the Routines tab, click Edit (the pencil) on the routine’s row.
  1. Under How often, pick On certain days of the week.
  2. Select Mon and set the time to 09:00.
  3. Leave Months empty. With nothing picked, it runs every month.
  4. Pick your zone under Time zone.
The line under the form spells the timetable out, “At 09:00, only on Monday”, and lists the next three runs. If the timetable is wrong, the line shows the reason in red. Click Save.
5

Run it now and read the log

You don’t have to wait for Monday. On the routine’s row, click Run now (the play button), and the row opens on its Runs list. The new run shows queued, then running. Until the script prints its first line, the run’s log reads “Waking the session and starting…”.When the run finishes, its chip turns ok, and the row shows how long the run took and that it was run by hand. Click the run to read its whole log, which is the script’s own output. The transcript also gets a Routine harbor-weekly-summary ran card with the end of that log.
A new summary is in #harbor-staff, and Next runs shows next Monday at 09:00. The routine is live.

​
What happens every Monday

Alpha’s server keeps the routine’s clock, and nothing inside the machine does. At 09:00 the server wakes the session’s machine, which takes about half a minute when it’s asleep. It runs the script with the session’s environment, records the run and its log, and lets the machine go back to sleep. A routine runs at most once every 15 minutes (default), because each run wakes a machine. Routines are capped at 20 per account, paused ones included. Both limits are on Limits.

​
Why a script and not the agent?

The agent saved this routine as a command because the summary follows the same steps every week. You can switch modes under What it does in the edit form. You connected Slack once, had the agent write and test a summary script, set it to run on Mondays at 09:00 in your zone, and checked a run by hand. From now on Alpha wakes the session each Monday, posts the summary and lets the machine sleep again.

​
Next steps

Routines

Pause, edit or remove a routine, and read every run’s log on one page.

Connect an app

Add Gmail, Calendar or Notion to a routine the same way you added Slack.

Use integrations in your app

Have Harbor itself post to Slack when a class fills up.

Sleep, wake and reset

Learn what a sleeping machine keeps, and how a routine’s run wakes it.