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Routines

Version: 1.5 | Last updated: 2026-08-11

A routine runs a Bluebox agent on a schedule. When it fires, it starts an agent run exactly as if you had asked the question yourself — a nightly cost review, a Monday-morning SLO check, a health report before every release.

Open Routines from the sidebar to see the routines in your workspace. Routines are not available in every workspace.

Create a routine​

Select Create routine. Only one field is required:

  • Name — a short label, shown in the routines list and in run history. For example, Nightly cost review.

Schedule starts on Daily at 6:00, so a routine is ready to save as soon as you have named it. Change the cadence if you want a different one.

Add a Prompt to say what the agent should do each time it fires, written the same way you would type it in chat — for example, Check for cost anomalies and summarize findings. Leave it blank and the name is used as the prompt, so give the routine a descriptive name if you skip this.

Everything else is optional. Select Create routine to save.

Choose a schedule​

The Schedule control offers five presets and a custom option, and starts on Daily:

  • Once — fires a single time at a date and time you pick, then stops.
  • Hourly — every hour, on the hour.
  • Daily — every day at a time you pick. This is the default.
  • Weekdays — Monday through Friday at a time you pick.
  • Weekly — one day a week at a time you pick.
  • Custom — a five-field cron expression (minute hour day-of-month month day-of-week). Use this for cadences the presets don't cover, such as 0 9 1 * * for 9 am on the first of every month.

Recurring routines also take a Timezone, which defaults to your browser's. The schedule is interpreted in that timezone, so a daily 9 am routine stays at 9 am local time across daylight-saving changes. You will find it under Advanced.

A routine's schedule type is fixed once created: a Once routine cannot become recurring, or the reverse. Create a new routine instead.

Limit when a routine runs​

Start at, End at, Max occurrences, Overlap policy, and Timezone sit under Advanced, collapsed. Every one is optional and already has a sensible default, so most routines never need them. Open the section to set them. When you edit a routine that already uses one, the section is open so you can see the value.

Three optional fields bound a routine's lifetime:

  • Start at — the routine does not fire before this date. Leave blank to start immediately. Recurring routines only.
  • End at — no new runs fire after this date. Leave blank to run indefinitely.
  • Max occurrences — stops the routine after this many runs. Leave blank for no limit.

Once a routine passes its end date or reaches its run limit, it stops for good and its last outcome reads Expired or Limit reached. Pushing the end date out or raising the limit does not bring it back on its own, and neither does the Enabled toggle. To restart it, edit its schedule or timezone — that recomputes the next run — or create a new routine.

You can raise or lower Max occurrences later, but you cannot clear it entirely once set. To remove the cap, delete the routine and create it again.

Decide what happens when runs overlap​

A run can still be going when the next one is due — an hourly routine whose work takes 70 minutes, for example. Overlap policy, under Advanced, decides what happens then:

  • Skip (the default) — the new fire is skipped and the in-progress run continues. The skip is recorded, not silent.
  • Allow — the new run starts anyway, and both run at the same time.

This applies to recurring routines only.

Run a routine now​

Select Run now — on the routine's detail page, or as a row action in the list — to start a run immediately, without waiting for the next scheduled time. This is the fastest way to check that a prompt does what you expect before you leave a routine running.

A manual run is deliberately independent of the schedule. It does not change when the routine next fires, does not count toward Max occurrences, and ignores the overlap policy. It also works on a disabled routine, so you can test one before turning it on.

Turn a routine on or off​

The Enabled toggle on the routines list is the master switch. A disabled routine never fires, whatever else it is configured to do. Turning it off does not stop a run already in progress and does not delete anything.

Turning it back on resumes the schedule from where it left off, which is not always the next slot on the calendar. If a scheduled time passed while the routine was off, expect a run shortly after you re-enable it. If it was off for longer than one interval, it skips the backlog and waits for the next slot.

Use the toggle rather than deleting a routine you expect to want again.

Edit or delete a routine​

Open a routine from the list, then select Edit to change any field except its schedule type, or Delete routine to remove it. Both actions are also available as row actions in the list.

Deleting a routine is permanent. Runs it already started are unaffected: any run still in progress continues to completion, and their results stay available. What you lose is the routine's own history view of them.

Read the run history​

The routines list carries a Next run and a Last run column, so you can see at a glance whether a routine is doing what you expect. Both show the time as an offset from now — in 19h, 5h ago — and anything further out than a week keeps its date instead. Point at either to read the exact timestamp. Last run pairs the time with a coloured icon for the outcome, and covers the most recent time the routine was due — including the times it did not run.

Cadence names a timezone only when it differs from your own. A routine that fires at 06:00 in your timezone reads At 06:00 AM; one that fires at 06:00 somewhere else reads At 06:00 AM · America/New_York, so a time that is not yours is never mistaken for one that is. The full cadence, timezone included, is always on the routine's detail page.

Open a routine for the detail: its cadence in plain language, when it runs next, and Run history — the runs it has actually started, newest first, with each run's status and a link to its full result. Select Load more to page further back. Skipped fires start no run, so they never appear in the history; the list's Last run column is where you see them.

What each outcome means​

OutcomeMeaning
Run startedThe routine fired and started a run.
Skipped (overlap)The previous run was still going and the overlap policy is Skip.
Skipped (stale)More than one scheduled time went by before Bluebox reached the routine, so it skipped ahead to the next slot.
Skipped (throttled)Your workspace has reached its limit on new runs.
ExpiredThe end date passed. The routine has stopped for good.
Limit reachedThe routine hit Max occurrences. It has stopped for good.

A routine that misses its scheduled time by a little still runs, late, as soon as Bluebox reaches it. What it will not do is work through a backlog: if more than one scheduled time has passed, it abandons the missed ones, records Skipped (stale), and picks up at the next slot. A daily routine that misses a full day runs once tomorrow, not twice.

Who can see your routines​

New routines are shared with your workspace by default. A routine is automation the whole team relies on, so your colleagues can see what is scheduled and read its results rather than wondering why something ran overnight.

Sharing is read-only. Everyone in the workspace can open a shared routine, read its schedule and prompt, and see its run history. Only you, as its owner, can edit it, run it now, turn it off, delete it, or change who sees it. A workspace owner can do those things to any routine, and that access is recorded.

You choose the visibility for each routine with the Visibility control in the create and edit form:

  • Only me — only you and the workspace owner see the routine.
  • Workspace — everyone in your workspace can view its schedule, prompt, and run history. This is the default.

The routines list has a Mine / Shared with me / All filter, so you can narrow a busy workspace to just your own routines. A small icon beside each name says whether the routine is private or shared, and an Owner column names who scheduled it. Under Mine that column is hidden, since every routine there is yours.

A routine's runs inherit its visibility. If a routine is shared, the runs it starts are readable by the workspace too; if it is private, so are its runs.

Workspace owners can change the default for new routines under Settings → Users & sharing. Changing the default does not touch routines that already exist — those keep the visibility they have until their owner changes it.

If someone is removed from a workspace, the routines they scheduled there are turned off. They stay off until a workspace owner turns them back on.

Runs count toward your workspace limits​

Every run a routine starts — scheduled or manual — counts against your workspace's allowance for new runs, the same as an investigation or a chat you start yourself. A routine firing every hour uses that allowance 24 times a day.

If the workspace is at its limit when a routine is due, the fire is skipped and recorded as Skipped (throttled). The routine is not disabled; it fires again on its next slot once there is room.

Next steps​