Contents7 sections
What drains people is often opening the same pages every day, collecting similar information, putting it into the same format, and sending the result to the same group—not the large creative tasks. WorkBuddy automation turns work with fixed timing, similar steps, and checkable results into repeatable Agent tasks.
Why can WorkBuddy automate tasks?
Traditional automation asks a person to write every step as code: which system to open, which button to click, which column to read, and which branch to take when something goes wrong.
WorkBuddy combines scheduled execution with the Agent's understanding, tool calling, and file-processing capabilities. Every detail does not need to be encoded in a program, but the goal, inputs, boundaries, and result must be explicit.
Automation settings are stored in the local client, including the task name, prompt, schedule, workspace directory, and execution status. When the scheduled time arrives, WorkBuddy launches an Agent task under the current login and calls the model, Skills, MCP, or connectors specified by the prompt to query, summarize, and process files in the designated workspace.
Five elements make a task stable: a clear trigger time, reusable input sources, a sufficiently specific prompt, a fixed and controlled workspace, and acceptance criteria that can distinguish success from failure.
What can automation do?
The most direct use is handing recurring daily, weekly, or monthly work to WorkBuddy. It reduces forgotten tasks and keeps the execution method from changing whenever a different person handles it.
| Scenario | What can be automated | Typical output |
|---|---|---|
| News and intelligence | Search industry news, policies, and competitor updates on a schedule; deduplicate and summarize | Daily brief, risk alerts, source list |
| Daily and weekly reports | Aggregate changes in tasks, calendars, documents, and data, then generate a fixed-format report | Daily report, weekly report, project progress table |
| Data and spreadsheets | Collect files, merge tables, clean fields, and check missing or abnormal values | Reconciliation sheet, exception list, trend chart |
| File management | Archive by date and project, batch-rename, and extract text from PDFs or images | Archive directory, index, processing log |
| Content operations | Collect topics, generate title candidates, organize assets, and prepare publishing drafts | Topic library, content draft, cover request |
| Knowledge management | Organize saved items, meeting notes, and ideas; add tags and sources | Knowledge cards, weekly review, to-process list |
| Product and engineering | Inspect logs, summarize issues, and check dependencies and build results | Inspection report, defect summary, upgrade suggestions |
| Personal affairs | Generate study plans, retrospectives, appointments, and reminders | Study checklist, reminder, execution record |
Which tasks should be automated first?
Use these six questions. The more “yes” answers, the better the task is suited to an initial automation:
- Does it repeat? It happens at least weekly rather than being a one-off request;
- Are the inputs stable? The folder, website, spreadsheet, or connector source is relatively fixed;
- Are the steps similar? The content changes, but the handling method is mostly the same;
- Can the result be accepted? You can check counts, fields, time range, sources, or whether a file was created;
- Can failure be recovered? The task can be rerun without immediate irreversible loss;
- Can permissions be controlled? The workspace, account, and allowed tools can be limited.
A suitable starting point is “collect 10 AI-industry news items at 08:00 every day, deduplicate them, keep the links, and save a Markdown brief in a specified directory,” rather than “run my entire company.” The clearer the scope, the easier it is to find problems and improve gradually.
From an idea to a runnable task
Before creating an automation, rewrite the spoken request as a small task specification. A reliable prompt should answer when to run, what to read, how to process it, where to write the output, what counts as complete, what to do after failure, and which actions are forbidden.
Task name: Daily AI industry brief
Trigger: Every day at 08:00, time zone Asia/Shanghai
Workspace: automation/ai-daily
Input:
- Search for AI product, model, and industry news from the past 24 hours
- Use only public sources that can be accessed and linked
Processing rules:
1. Merge duplicate events and organize them into product, technology, and business categories
2. Include a title, 100-character summary, source, publication time, and link for every item
3. Put items whose publication time or source cannot be confirmed under “To verify”; do not invent details
Output:
- Save as YYYY-MM-DD-ai-daily.md
- At most 10 items in the body, followed by a source listCreate an automated task
Open the Automations page in WorkBuddy to view scheduled tasks and execution history. Click Add and configure the task name, workspace, prompt, model and Skills, schedule, and whether the completed result should be pushed to the WorkBuddy mini-program.
| Setting | Purpose | Suggestion |
|---|---|---|
| Name | Distinguish automations | State the object and frequency, such as “Daily AI Brief” |
| Workspace | Limit the execution directory and save location | Give each automation its own directory to avoid overwriting others |
| Prompt | Describe goal, steps, output, and boundaries | Use the task template instead of a slogan |
| Model and Skills | Define available understanding and execution capabilities | Select only the Skills and connectors the task needs |
| Schedule | Set frequency and effective date | Test at low frequency first, then increase it |
| Push to mini-program | View results on a phone after completion | Confirm which results will sync to the cloud through the secure channel |
Click Automations, then Add automation, to customize a task—for example, send daily AI news at 08:00.
Start with a template when writing a prompt from scratch is unnecessary
Official task templates cover common scenarios such as news delivery, weekly reports, health-check appointments, and study plans. A template provides fields and structure, but it is not the final answer. After selecting one, still edit the data source, time range, output location, acceptance criteria, and prohibited actions.
More automation scenarios to try
| Task | Trigger | Human check to keep |
|---|---|---|
| Weekly report | Read the week's tasks, calendar, and delivered files every Friday | Confirm progress and risk wording before sending |
| Sales daily report | Aggregate new customers and follow-ups from the CRM or spreadsheet | Check amounts, customer status, and owner |
| Expense and invoice organization | Read receipts and reimbursement sheets in a specified directory each month | Check tax amounts, duplicates, and ownership before finance submission |
| Social-content topic radar | Collect trends, industry topics, and comment questions each day | Judge brand position and whether a trend should be followed |
| Knowledge-base weekly review | Organize new notes, saved items, and meeting minutes each week | Confirm categories, sources, and long-term value |
| Project-risk inspection | Check delayed tasks, build results, and error logs every day | A responsible person handles serious alerts |
| Competitor price monitoring | Read public pages or authorized APIs on a schedule | Pause and repair parsing rules when page structure changes |
| Study-plan review | Remind daily and summarize completion on weekends | Adjust next week's plan to actual energy and time |
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References
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WorkBuddy In Action