What an automation is
A standing order Roma carries out on a schedule or when you ask.
An automation is a standing order: something Roma does for you on its own, on a schedule or when you ask, working from your connected apps and everything in Roma. You say what should happen and when, once, and from then on the operator does it without being asked again. Each run leaves its result in your chat.
Two shapes of automation
An automation either follows steps or performs one fixed action.
Steps. A numbered playbook the operator follows on each run: read the file, list the issues, look at the mail, write the brief. A run is the operator at work with your real tools, so it can read your connected apps, search the web and create or update tasks and notes in Roma.
A fixed action. The same thing every time, with nothing to read or decide: every Saturday at 9, a task called Water the plants. You give it a title, notes and the list it lands on, and each run creates that task or item.
An automation's page switches between the two. Steps you already wrote are kept when you switch to a fixed action, so switching back restores them.
Mara runs a small studio and wants to know every weekday morning which of her Linear issues are blocked. She tells her operator so, once. Every weekday at 8 the automation reads the issues assigned to her, lists the blocked ones and leaves one short message in her chat, and Mara reads it over coffee.
What every automation has
A name, and under it one line saying what each run does.
A schedule: on demand, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly or every so many minutes. When an automation runs has the full list.
Its steps, or its fixed action.
A state: switched on, paused, or not set up yet.
Its runs, each with when it ran, how it ended and what it wrote, and a Run now button for a run outside the schedule.
A chat of its own. Ask how the last run went, or say "Next time, also:" and the operator updates the steps.
A body with version history, the way a task or a note has one.
What a run may touch
A run reads widely and writes only inside Roma. It can read every connected app (your mail, your calendar, Linear, Notion, GitHub and the rest), search the web, and inside Roma read your lists and create or update items. It never deletes anything, never moves an item, never sends a mail and never writes into another app. The one standing exception is the archiving you asked Mail check for: a sender you told it to archive from now on is archived in Gmail each morning. There is no approval card in a run, because nobody is there to answer one, so the run holds to what you can undo by hand afterwards.
The operator's browser, in beta, is open to a run too: public pages, read only. When a site wants you, the run says where it stopped and waits for you to finish there. The operator's browser explains how that works.
Where the result lands
The run's closing message lands in your chat as the operator's own message, one message per run, with a heading per section and a line per item. A run with nothing to report says nothing at all. The automation's page still lists that run, so you can see it happened. If the Automations switch in Settings → Notifications is on, a result also reaches your iPhone as a push and your Mac as a banner.
The ones every account starts with
You do not start from nothing. The Morning briefing is switched on from your first minute, at 07:00 in your time zone. Meeting prep and Mail check wait for Google Calendar and Gmail, and switch themselves on the moment you connect each app. The Daily check-in exists once you say yes to it. The automations Roma starts with describes each one.
Automations and your agents
An agent connected to your account (ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor and the rest) can list your automations and run one, and the result lands in your Roma chat rather than in the agent's conversation. An agent cannot create or change an automation. That stays between you and the operator, where a card shows you the steps before anything runs. Agents in Roma covers what an agent can do.
Questions people ask
Is an automation the same as a repeating task?
A repeating task is one kind of automation: a fixed action that creates the same task each time, such as "every Saturday at 9, a task called Water the plants". An automation with steps goes further. It reads your apps and the web, decides what matters, and writes the result as a message or as tasks.
Does an automation run when my Mac is closed?
Yes. Runs happen on Roma's side, not on your device, so your Mac can be shut and your phone in your pocket. The result is waiting in your chat on every device when you come back.
Can an automation send an email or post somewhere for me?
No. A run never writes outside Roma, apart from one standing exception: a sender you asked Mail check to archive from now on is archived in Gmail each morning. It can read your mail and your apps, write tasks and notes, and leave a message in your chat. When the message offers a next step, such as a button under a line that reads Draft the reply, a tap hands that work to the operator in your chat, where you see what it does.
How is an automation created?
Ask the operator in any chat ("every Monday at 9, add a row to my Weekly updates list"), or press New automation and fill in the form with the operator beside you. Create your own automation walks through both doors.