Automations: Scheduled Jobs, Webhooks, and Gmail Triggers

Automations serve as OpenClaw's scheduler, built in. Jobs are persisted by the scheduler, which wakes the agent at the appropriate moment and can send output to a chat channel, a webhook, or no destination at all.

The openclaw automations CLI is how you manage automations; openclaw cron is still accepted as an alias for those same commands.

Quick start

Add a one-shot reminder

openclaw automations create "2027-02-01T16:00:00Z" \
  --name "Reminder" \
  --session main \
  --system-event "Reminder: check the automations docs draft" \
  --wake now \
  --delete-after-run

Check your jobs

openclaw automations list
openclaw automations get <job-id>
openclaw automations show <job-id>

See run history

openclaw automations runs <job-id>

Where each section moved

What follows is an index page. Content for each section now lives on a child page, and any anchor that worked in the single-page version still resolves here.

Runtime model and promotion

How automations work, The runtime model, the lifecycle of a run, and job promotion.

• How automations work
• Isolated run hardening
• Run reconciliation
• Promoting a repeated job into an automation

Schedule and trigger sections

Automation schedules, Kinds of schedules, cron rules, pacing, and condition watchers.

• Schedule types
• Heartbeat task migration
• Monitoring policies
• Job scratch and quiet results
• Stream sources
• Dynamic cadence (pacing)
• /loop chat shortcut
• Day-of-month and day-of-week use OR logic
• Event triggers (condition watchers)

Payload and execution sections

Automation payloads, Kinds of payloads, agent-turn flags, and session execution styles.

• Payloads
• Agent-turn options
• --message
• --model
• --fallbacks
• --clear-fallbacks
• --clear-model
• --thinking
• --clear-thinking
• --light-context
• --tools
• Command payloads
• Script payloads
• Execution styles
• Codex apps in scheduled automations
• Main session vs current vs isolated vs custom
• What 'fresh session' means for isolated jobs
• Unattended run contract
• Subagent and Discord delivery

Delivery sections

Automation delivery, Delivery modes, notifications when a run fails, and the language of output.

• Delivery and output
• Failure notifications
• Output language

Management and configuration sections

Manage automations, management commands, run history, config keys, and CLI examples.

• CLI examples
• One-shot reminder
• Recurring isolated job
• Model and thinking override
• Webhook output
• Command output
• Managing jobs
• Conversational management
• CLI management
• Configuration
• Retry behavior
• Maintenance
• Legacy store migration

Inbound webhook sections

Inbound webhooks, HTTP hooks on the Gateway that external callers invoke.

• Webhooks
• Enable and test an agent hook
• Authentication
• POST /hooks/wake
• POST /hooks/agent
• Mapped hooks (POST /hooks/<name>)
• Verify and troubleshoot hook requests

Gmail sections

Gmail PubSub triggers, trigger Gmail inbox activity via Google Pub/Sub.

• Gmail PubSub integration
• Configure a restricted Gmail reader (recommended)
• Authenticate the reader model
• Connect Gmail transport
• Verify the reader boundary
• Gateway auto-start
• Manual one-time setup
• Select the GCP project
• Create topic and grant Gmail push access
• Start the watch
• Gmail model override

Troubleshooting sections

Automation troubleshooting, the command ladder plus the failure shapes automations commonly take.

• Troubleshooting
• Command ladder
• Automations not firing
• Job fired but no delivery
• Automations or heartbeat appear to prevent /new-style rollover
• Timezone gotchas

Related

• Automation, every automation mechanism compared at a glance
• Heartbeat migration, move periodic monitoring onto editable jobs
• Standing intents, work triggered by events rather than a schedule
• Standing orders, the operating authority under which a scheduled run acts
• Timezone, configuring the timezone