discuss-automation

Discuss an automation

Author automations the way Kanban cards are discussed — a real conversation, not a plain-English goal box.

Flow

1. Open the Discuss conversation. The Automations view's "Discuss an automation" button opens the web-channel in James mode with the kickoff "What would you like to automate?" (built by lib/discuss.mjs buildAutomationDiscussUrl). The gateway reads the mode from the leading "James," in the kickoff and ignores body.context, so the kickoff carries everything.

2. Converse — ask, don't assume. Surface the load-bearing decisions and ask the user:

   • Trigger — manual, cron ("every weekday 8am"), webhook (a connector event), or listener (poll a connector).
   • Connectors — which connected services it uses (Google / Slack / Trello / …). If one isn't connected, note it (the run will pause awaiting_connector).
   • Steps — the rough sequence, using ONLY the 8 step types: browser, verify, navigate, wait, local_command, api_call, connector, sub_automation.
   • Inputs — what the automation takes (e.g. recipient_email).
   • Failure handling — what should happen if a step fails (the engine self-heals recoverable browser steps; a CAPTCHA/MFA/payment pauses for you).

3. Write the brief. When the design has settled, write ~/.garrison/automations/briefs/<slug>.md with: what this automates · trigger · connectors · steps outline · inputs · failure handling · acceptance.

4. Plan + rehearse. Hand the brief to the planner (Router-routed, no hardcoded model):

   POST <automations-url>/api/automations/plan-from-brief
        { "briefSlug": "<slug>", "name": "<name>" }
   

   It turns the brief into steps, saves the automation, and returns it. The user reviews + hand-edits the steps, then runs it — watching each step stream in the run viewer (cached/vision tier, live browser stream, self-healing notices, per-step feedback).

The plain-English goal textarea is gone; this conversation is how automations are authored. Steps stay hand-editable afterward.