Skip to main content
Applies to v3.9.0Reviewed 2026-06-03

Automation Templates

Automation Templates let you define reusable multi-step workflows that Chiro executes on your behalf — triggered manually, on a schedule, by an operational insight, or by an incoming connector event.

What you can automate

Templates compose the same actions Chiro already performs:

  • Create tasks
  • Send emails (with approval)
  • Post messages to Slack
  • Call tools on your registered MCP servers
  • Search the web

Each step can have parameters substituted at run time using {{variable_name}} placeholders.

Trigger types

TriggerWhen it fires
ManualWhen you click "Run" in the template dashboard
ScheduledOn a cron schedule (e.g. every Monday at 9 AM)
Insight-triggeredWhen Chiro detects a specific operational insight (stalled work, pending approval, etc.)
Event-triggeredWhen a connector event of a specific type is ingested

Setting up templates

  1. Open your organisation workspace and go to Organization → Model
  2. Scroll to Automation Templates
  3. Click Add from catalog to browse pre-built templates, or create a new one from scratch
  4. For catalog templates: click Add to copy the template into your workspace; then edit it to suit your setup
  5. Set the template to Active when you're ready for it to run

Pre-built catalog templates

Achiral ships three ready-to-use templates:

Weekly Ops Digest

  • Trigger: Every Monday at 9 AM
  • What it does: Posts a Slack message when Chiro has detected new operational insights that week
  • Parameters: slack_channel (default: #general)

Stalled Work Nudge

  • Trigger: When Chiro detects a stalled-work insight
  • What it does: Automatically notifies your team on Slack
  • Parameters: slack_channel (default: #team)

New Customer Onboarding

  • Trigger: Manual
  • What it does: Creates a setup task, sends a welcome email (requires approval), and notifies the team on Slack
  • Parameters: customer_name, customer_email, plan, slack_channel

Approval gates

Steps that use actions requiring human approval (such as send_email) pause the run. The run resumes automatically once the action is approved through the normal approvals flow.

The run history shows each step's status with colour-coded indicators: green (completed), orange (awaiting approval), red (failed).

Run history

Click the expand arrow on any template to see the last five runs with per-step status. Runs older than 90 days are automatically cleaned up.

Parameters

When running a manual template, you're prompted for any required parameters. Optional parameters that aren't filled in use their default values.

Parameter substitution uses {{param_key}} placeholders inside step params. For example, a send_email step with "to": "{{customer_email}}" will use the value you provide at run time.

Safety

  • Templates running from event or insight triggers include a recursion guard: if the same template is already in progress for your organisation, a new trigger is ignored to prevent infinite loops
  • Each step's onFailure setting controls whether the run stops, continues, or skips the step on error
  • All actions performed by automation templates are logged in the Action History with full audit details

Reviewed 2026-05-09 for Achiral AI v3.7.1.