Routines

Write an instruction once, and Hamster runs it automatically whenever the right thing happens in your workspace.

The job routines do

Every product team has work that should happen every single time — summarise a new brief so the team has shared context, check a completed task against the brief's acceptance criteria, flag when a plan changes scope. Without automation, this relies on someone remembering to do it. Sometimes they do. Often they don't.

Routines take those recurring jobs off your team's plate. You write the instruction once, attach it to the events that should trigger it, and it runs without anyone thinking about it.

A routine has two parts:

  • Instructions — what you want Hamster to do, written in plain English or markdown
  • Triggers — the workspace events that cause it to run

When a trigger fires, Hamster reads your instructions, gathers the full context of the triggering event, and executes. The output lands in the run history, and any changes it makes to briefs, tasks, or documents appear in the normal activity feed.

Creating a routine

Open Routines from the workspace sidebar and select New Routine.

The editor has three tabs:

  • Instructions — write what Hamster should do. Be specific. Reference the thing that triggered the routine directly — "the brief that was just created", "the task that was just completed".
  • Triggers — choose one or more workspace events that cause the routine to run. Triggers are optional at save time — you can write and test your instructions before attaching any.
  • Runs — see every execution for this routine, with the input it received and the output it produced.

Writing instructions

Instructions are plain-language prompts. Hamster receives the full context of the triggering event — the brief content, the task details, the initiative it belongs to — so you can reference entities directly rather than describing them abstractly.

A few patterns that work:

When this brief is created, write a two-paragraph research summary based on
the description and add it to the brief as a context document.
When a task is marked complete, check that the task title and description
match the acceptance criteria in the parent brief. If they don't align,
post a note in the task thread with the specific discrepancy.
When this blueprint is updated, compare the new version against the previous
version and summarise what changed in three bullet points.
When an initiative status changes to "delivering", scan the attached briefs
for any tasks that are still in draft state and flag them in a comment on
the initiative.

Instructions can be as long as you need. Routines support full markdown, so you can include examples, formatting rules, or multi-step logic.

Testing your instructions before going live

Use Test Run to check that your instructions produce the right output before attaching any triggers.

Select Test Run from the routine modal, and Hamster executes immediately using a sample event payload. The result appears in the Runs tab — review the output and adjust your instructions until you're satisfied.

You can test at any point, with or without triggers configured. Test runs are logged separately from production runs so you can tell them apart.

The test-run button is disabled when:

  • Your instructions are empty — a tooltip explains why
  • A run is pending or in progress
  • A 30-second cooldown is active after the last run completes

Triggers

Triggers are workspace lifecycle events. Add one or more from the Triggers tab. A single routine can respond to multiple events — for example, both brief.created and brief.status_changed.

Group Events
Brief Created, updated, status changed, deleted, document added/removed, task added/removed, member added/removed, comment added
Initiative Created, updated, status changed, deleted, brief added/removed, member added/removed, comment added
Blueprint Created, updated, deleted, published, section added/removed
Task Created, updated, status changed, assigned/unassigned, completed, deleted
Plan Generated, updated

Each trigger can be enabled or disabled individually — toggle the switch next to a trigger to pause it without removing the configuration.

Run history

Every execution is logged. Open the Runs tab inside a routine to see its history, or go to Routines → All Runs to see every execution across your workspace in one feed.

The feed updates in real time as runs complete.

Each run shows:

  • The trigger event that caused it (or "Test run" if manually triggered)
  • The input — what context the routine received
  • The output — what Hamster produced
  • Status: queued, running, success, or failed
  • Start and completion timestamps

Click any run to open the full thread view with the complete input and output.

Permissions

Creating, editing, and running routines requires the Manage Routines permission. Members without this permission can view routines and their run history, but can't create, edit, or trigger them.

Routines are account-level — they apply to your whole team workspace, not just the person who created them.

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