Routines
A routine is work a bot does later on its own: once at a time you pick, on a repeating schedule, or when something happens, such as a webhook, a meeting, a message or an event on your phone. Use routines for reminders, daily reports, follow-ups and anything you'd otherwise have to ask for again and again.
This page also covers watchers ("tell me when...") and check-ins (a morning brief and suggestions), which are built on the same machinery.
Create a routine
The quickest way is to ask the bot in chat: "Remind me in 20 minutes to call Ana" or "Every weekday at 9:00, summarize my inbox". The bot creates the routine itself, and creating or changing its own routines never needs your approval. What the routine later does still goes through your usual approvals.
To create one yourself:
- Open the bot's chat, open the More menu and tap Routines. You can also go to Bot settings → Routines.
- Tap New routine.
- Enter a Name and Instructions: what the bot should do each time.
- Pick a trigger: Once, Repeats, Meetings, Messages, GitHub or Webhook, and fill in its options (below).
- Tap Create.
Manage routines
Each routine in the list shows its trigger, when it runs Next and when it ran Last.
- Use the switch to turn a routine on or off. An off routine shows Off.
- Open its More menu and tap Run now to start it immediately. View run opens the run.
- Delete stops it for good. Results it already posted stay in their conversation.
You can also ask the bot to list, change or delete its routines.
One-time routines
Choose Once, then tap In 15 min, In 1 hour or Tomorrow 9:00, or pick a date and time. The routine runs a single time and then switches itself off.
When you ask a bot for a reminder in chat, it creates a one-time routine, not a repeating one.
Repeating schedules
Choose Repeats, then tap a preset or write your own Cron expression:
| Preset | Cron |
|---|---|
| Every day at 7:00 | 0 7 * * * |
| Weekdays at 9:00 | 0 9 * * 1-5 |
| Every hour | 0 * * * * |
| Mondays at 9:00 | 0 9 * * 1 |
Cron uses five fields: minute, hour, day of month, month and weekday. For example, 30 17 * * 5 runs at 17:30 every Friday.
The Timezone field takes an IANA name such as America/Chicago. The schedule follows that zone, including daylight saving changes. Check it before you tap Create: the app fills it in from your device when it can, and otherwise uses America/Chicago.
Webhooks
A webhook routine runs whenever another service posts to its URL. The run gets the request body, and the event name when the sender includes one.
- Choose Webhook for any service, or GitHub for a GitHub repository webhook.
- Tap Create.
- Copy the URL and the Signing secret. The secret is shown only once.
- Add the URL as a webhook in the other service, signed with the secret.
Every request must be signed with HMAC-SHA256 of the raw body: GitHub sends X-Hub-Signature-256, and other services send X-Casama-Signature: sha256=<hex>. Unsigned or wrongly signed requests are ignored. Casama answers 202 Accepted either way, so nobody can probe which routines exist. See Webhooks for signing examples.
Meeting triggers
A meeting routine runs around events on a connected calendar, for example a prep note 15 minutes before every meeting with a customer.
- Connect Google Calendar or Outlook first. See Connections.
- In New routine, choose Meetings and pick the Calendar.
- Pick when to run: 30 min, 15 min or 5 min before, At start, or 15 min after.
- Optionally narrow it down:
- Only meetings with people outside my company: at least one guest's email domain differs from yours.
- Only meetings with a video link: a Meet, Zoom, Teams, Webex or Whereby link anywhere in the event.
- Only titles containing (optional).
- Tap Create.
Casama checks the calendar every 5 minutes, looking 36 hours ahead, and skips cancelled events. Each matching event starts one run, within a minute of its time. If the event moves before then, the run moves with it. The run gets the event's title, times, guests, link, location and description.
Message triggers
A message routine runs when an email or chat message to the bot matches your filters, even from someone the bot doesn't normally chat with. For example, a vendor's invoice email can start a routine that files it.
- Connect the app under the bot's Chat apps first. See Chat apps.
- In New routine, choose Messages.
- Set at least one filter:
- App: one chat app, or Any app.
- From (address, number, or *@company.com).
- Subject contains.
- Message contains.
- Tap Create.
A message that starts a routine isn't also answered as a normal chat message. The run treats the message as untrusted content, so instructions inside it can't take over the bot.
Device triggers
A device routine runs when something happens on your own phone or computer. Ask the bot to set one up, for example "When I leave work, text me the grocery list" or "When a PDF lands in Downloads, file it". Device routines only ever fire for the person who created them; a teammate's routine never sees your events.
| Event | Fires when | Needs |
|---|---|---|
| Wake | You wake up, from last night's sleep in your health data. Once a day. | Health data on your phone |
| Arrive, leave | You arrive at or leave a named place, such as Home or Work. | Places on iOS or Android |
| Leave now | It's time to leave for your next calendar event that has a location, based on live travel time plus a buffer (5 minutes by default). | Places, a connected calendar, and a Google Maps or Mapbox key |
| Workout ended | A workout ended in the last 6 hours. | Health data on your phone |
| Notification | A notification arrives from an app you picked. One-time codes are masked. | Android's notification access |
| File added | A new file appears in a watched folder, optionally matching a pattern such as *.pdf. | Watched folders in the desktop app |
Set up places, watched apps and watched folders in Settings → Device connections. Casama keeps only place names and times, never a location trail. See Devices for setup and privacy details.
The routine starts as soon as the event reaches the server. A retried upload never starts it twice.
Where results go
A routine posts its results in a chat with you, so they read like the rest of your conversation:
- A routine the bot created in chat posts back into that chat.
- A routine made in Routines, or before this behavior existed, posts into your latest direct chat with that bot. If you've never chatted with it, a new chat is started.
The start of each run shows as "Routine "Daily summary" ran" rather than as a message from you, and the open chat updates when the result arrives.
You also get a notification with the result, linked to the chat. Casama's attention rules decide when it reaches you, and the notification says which routine sent it.
Routine runs are normal runs, with the usual step, time and budget limits. See Usage and budgets.
Watchers
A watcher keeps an eye on something and wakes the bot only when it changes. Ask the bot "tell me when..." and it creates one.
| Kind | Watches |
|---|---|
| Page | The visible text of a web page, optionally from a given heading or phrase on. It can read signed-in pages in the bot's browser when the computer is awake. |
| Reply | A new comment from a person on a ticket. |
| Result | The result of a read-only tool from one of the bot's connections. |
| Time | A moment in time. It fires once and finishes. |
How watchers work:
- Checks run every 15 minutes by default, and as often as every minute.
- The first check only records the starting point.
- Checks don't use the model, so an unchanged check costs nothing. When something changes, the bot gets a run with what changed, your condition and what to do, and decides whether it counts.
- A watcher can expire after a set number of days.
To manage them, open Bot settings → Watchers. Each shows Watching, Paused, Done or Expired and how many times it fired. Use Pause, Resume or Delete, or open it to see its conversation.
Watchers fetch outside pages, so creating one follows the bot's normal approval rules.
Check-ins
Check-ins give you a morning brief from a bot and a look every few hours for things that need you. They're off by default.
- Open Bot settings → Check-ins.
- Turn them on and set Morning brief at (8:00 by default), Look every (1 to 24 hours, default 3) and Daily limit (default $1).
- Tap Save.
Briefs and suggestions go to the person who turned check-ins on, in their timezone. They appear in Inbox → For you:
- Morning brief from {bot}: the latest brief from each bot.
- Suggestions: things the bot thinks you should act on. Tap Do it to start a chat asking the bot to do it (its actions still go through approvals), or Dismiss and choose Just this once or Don't suggest it again.
Check-ins use the bot's cheap model when it has one, and stop for the day once they reach the daily limit. A look that finds nothing writes nothing and sends nothing. Only urgent suggestions send a notification. If your phone shares health data, the brief can also run when you wake up, and the scheduled time becomes the fallback.
Limits
- Device routines can only be created by asking a bot; New routine doesn't offer them.
- Focus and Do Not Disturb events, and Android's first unlock as a wake-up signal, aren't collected yet.
- Android hears notifications only while the Casama app's process is running.
- Calendar changes are picked up by the 5-minute check; Casama doesn't receive change notifications from calendar providers yet.
- Watchers can't watch email or chat replies yet; replies on tickets work.
- In the app you can't edit a routine after creating it. Ask the bot to change it instead.