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Automations

Automations are how you run a drip campaign, a welcome sequence, a churn recovery, a trial conversion flow — anything that looks like "when X happens, do Y, then wait, then maybe do Z."

Under the hood, an automation is a directed acyclic graph (DAG) of steps. You drag step nodes onto a canvas and connect them with edges. When a profile enters the automation, they walk through it one step at a time.

Anatomy

Every automation has:

• A trigger — what kicks it off.
• Steps — the work to do.
• A state — DRAFT (not running yet), ACTIVE (firing for new profiles), or PAUSED (stopped).

Triggers

• subscription_trial — fired when a Stripe subscription enters status = "trialing". Most common for "new trial user" onboarding sequences.
• subscription_paid — fired when a subscription moves to status = "active". Most common for "welcome to the paid plan" sequences.
• stage_enter — fires whenever a profile enters any stage. Legacy trigger; prefer the subscription-specific triggers when you can.
• churn (coming soon) — fired when a subscription is canceled.

Step types

Step	What it does	Config
SEND_EMAIL	Render blocks, enqueue an email send	Email blocks, sender, subject
WAIT	Pause for a fixed duration	Months / days / hours / minutes
WAIT_UNTIL	Pause until an event fires	Event name (e.g., email_opened), optional timeout
CONDITIONAL_SPLIT	Branch on a condition	Condition (e.g., email_opened == true), two output branches
PERCENTAGE_SPLIT	A/B split deterministically	Percent to left branch (e.g., 50 / 50)

Status

Per-profile run state:

• RUNNING — currently walking through the graph.
• WAITING_FOR_EVENT — parked on a WAIT_UNTIL step, waiting for the trigger.
• COMPLETED — reached the end successfully.
• CANCELLED — exited early (e.g., the profile unsubscribed, or you paused the automation).

Per-automation state:

• DRAFT — not running yet.
• ACTIVE — new profiles enter as they match the trigger.
• PAUSED — no new enrollments, existing runs keep executing.

A typical automation

Trial welcome

trigger: subscription_trial
    │
    ▼
[SEND_EMAIL: "Welcome — here's the 60-second quickstart"]
    │
    ▼
[WAIT: 2 days]
    │
    ▼
[SEND_EMAIL: "3 things Pro users do first"]
    │
    ▼
[WAIT: 3 days]
    │
    ▼
[CONDITIONAL_SPLIT: did they upgrade yet?]
    │                                          │
    ▼ yes                                      ▼ no
[SEND_EMAIL: "Glad you stuck around"]         [SEND_EMAIL: "Trial ends tomorrow"]

Churn recovery

trigger: churn   (or: stage_enter CUSTOMER where bucket=Churned)
    │
    ▼
[WAIT: 7 days]
    │
    ▼
[SEND_EMAIL: "Can you tell us why?"]
    │
    ▼
[WAIT_UNTIL: email_opened  (timeout: 7 days)]
    │                                  │
    ▼ opened                           ▼ timed out
[SEND_EMAIL: 20% discount offer]      [SEND_EMAIL: "Last chance — 30% off"]

How execution works

A cron runs every 5 minutes, picks up all RUNNING automation runs whose nextStepAt is in the past, and advances them one step:

• SEND_EMAIL — enqueues the email (actual send happens in the email cron).
• WAIT — sets nextStepAt = now + delay, stays RUNNING.
• WAIT_UNTIL — sets status to WAITING_FOR_EVENT. When the event fires, the run flips back to RUNNING and continues.
• CONDITIONAL_SPLIT — evaluates the condition, follows the matching edge.
• PERCENTAGE_SPLIT — hashes (automationRunId + stepId) mod 100, compares to threshold, follows the matching edge. Deterministic — the same profile always takes the same branch.

Unsubscribe and suppression

If a profile unsubscribes at any point during an automation run, their current run is immediately marked CANCELLED. They also won't receive emails from any other campaign or automation in the workspace — unsubscribes are workspace-wide.

Plan limits

Plan	Automations per stage	Max step depth	Email/month
FREE	0	—	—
HOBBY	1	3	3,000
PRO	5	5	20,000

"Step depth" counts unique steps along the longest path — a 3-step sequence with one split branching off is depth 3, not 4.

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Next: Conversion → • Full funnel tracking →