Fact-checked 14 Oct 2026. Every claim below was checked against the official docs listed at the end on 14 Oct 2026.
Skills vs routines
- A skill is a reusable set of instructions for how to do a task.
- A routine tells one Bot when to run a workflow: on a schedule or, where supported, after an event such as a Slack message or a GitHub notification.
The docs recommend getting a one-off task working reliably first, then saving it as a skill, and only then automating it with a routine.
Creating a routine
Ask the Bot that should own the job. Example from the docs:
Every weekday at 8:00 AM, run the Daily customer-risk skill against the current account list. Post a linked watch list in this conversation. Do not contact customers. If the source data is unavailable, report the failure instead of using old data.
Confirm the owning Bot, the schedule and time zone, the input source, the expected result, the approval boundary, and what happens when a source is missing.
Limits worth knowing
- Up to 50 routines per Bot. The app keeps the 20 most recent run records per routine.
- Schedules must be at least five minutes apart.
- Deleting a routine is immediate and can’t be undone. Deleting a Bot removes its routines.
- Every run uses usage, and so does a Test, because it does real work. An hourly schedule, a short interval or a Slack trigger on a busy channel can use a week of usage in a day.
Safe automation checklist (from the docs)
- Automate preparation first, then execution.
- Require approval for sending, purchasing, deleting, publishing or changing production systems.
- Include a policy for when data is missing or stale.
- Re-test after a website, connector or source format changes.
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