Quickstart: Your First Automation
Build, test, and publish a triggered workflow on the Wato canvas in a few minutes.
An automation is a workflow that runs on a trigger and carries out steps — calling approved connector tools and asking an agent to make decisions. You build it on a visual canvas. This quickstart builds a simple scheduled digest.
Prefer to build from a chat?
If you're working in a connected agent (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor), you can turn the work you just did in a conversation into an automation draft instead of drawing it by hand. See Build Automations from a Chat.
Before you start
- You're a member of a team (your workspace starts with General).
- For steps that call a connector, that connector is approved for the team (see Configure MCP access). The example below uses one connector tool; you can skip it and use only an agent step.
1. Create an automation
Go to Teams → [Team] → Automations and choose New. You get a blank canvas with a Start node connected to a Done node. You'll add a trigger and steps in between.
Linear flow
Automations currently run as a single linear path — each node connects to one next node, Start through Done. Build a straight line of steps.
2. Add a trigger
From the palette, add one trigger and connect it after Start:
| Trigger | Starts the automation when… |
|---|---|
| Schedule | a cron-style time arrives (interval, daily, or weekly, with a timezone). |
| Webhook | an HTTP request hits the automation's signed webhook URL. |
| Connector | an approved connector emits an event (e.g. Linear or GitHub activity). |
For this quickstart, add a Schedule trigger and set it to run daily at a time you choose.
3. Add steps
Add steps between the trigger and Done, connecting them in order:
- Connector tool — calls one approved connector tool. Pick the connector and tool, then provide the input as JSON (or leave fields for an agent step to fill).
- Agent prompt — asks an agent (Claude) to do something with the data so far: summarize, decide, or format an output.
Example digest:
- Connector tool — fetch recent items (e.g. Linear
list_issues). - Agent prompt — "Summarize these issues into a short standup digest."
An agent step can fill missing inputs for a following tool step, so you can chain "decide, then act."
Edit with the chat bar
You don't have to wire every field by hand. The canvas has a chat bar: describe
the change in plain English ("set the schedule to weekdays at 9am", "wire the
label step's message id to the fetched email's id", "add a Slack message step at
the end") and Wato applies a targeted edit to the canvas. The same capability is
available over MCP with wato_edit_automation_draft.
4. Test it
Use Test run to execute the draft once with the current configuration. Check that each step produced the output you expected before publishing.
5. Publish
Publish turns the draft into a live automation. Wato validates the canvas first:
- there's a trigger,
- every node is connected in one path from Start to Done,
- each Agent prompt has a prompt,
- each Connector tool has a connector and tool selected.
Publishing a Webhook automation activates its URL; a Connector trigger registers the underlying connector subscription; a Schedule trigger sets the next run time.
6. Run, enable, and review
- A published automation runs automatically on its trigger. Toggle enabled off to pause it without unpublishing.
- Open Automations → Runs to see each run. A run moves through
started → in_progress → done(orfailed). - Open a run to see the step-by-step breakdown — each step's input, output, status, and any error — plus the trigger payload and final result.
Self-healing (optional)
Turn on self-healing for an automation and, when a run fails at a step, Wato attempts to repair it automatically: it identifies the failed step and the error, proposes a targeted edit to the draft, and restarts the run. It's opt-in per automation — toggle it on the automation's card in the Automations list.