After successfully creating and publishing your automation, your AI assistant can manage it through the Todoist Automations MCP. Instruct your assistant in plain language to:
- Turn an automation on or off
- Run an automation on demand
- Change what your automation does
- Update an automation’s schedule
- Fix any connections
- Review an automation’s run history
- Delete an automation
Learn about each option, and how to prompt your AI assistant to perform each action.
Before you start, connect Todoist Automations to your AI assistant, like ChatGPT or Claude. This way, you make changes to automations through your AI assistant, not directly in the Todoist Automations app.
Find an automation
Your AI assistant needs to know which automation you mean before it can manage it. Instruct it to list your automations, or name the automation you want to work with:
- “Show me my automations.”
- “Give me a list of automations that are turned off.”
- “Show me the details of my weekly summary automation.”
If you belong to a team workspace, say whether you mean your personal automations or the ones in a workspace.
Turn an automation on or off
Turning an automation off stops it from running without deleting it, so you can pause it temporarily, make adjustments as needed, and turn it back on later. Ask your assistant to turn it on or off:
- “Turn off my weekly summary automation.”
- “Turn my weekly summary automation back on.”
This change takes effect right away, so your assistant may check with you before making it.
Run an automation on demand
Running an automation on demand triggers a run immediately, and outside its normal run schedule. This is useful for testing a change or getting an overdue run out of the way.
Instruct your AI assistant to run it, like “Run my weekly summary automation now.”
It starts the run, waits for it to finish, and tells you how it ended. If the run fails, your assistant tells you which step failed and why. If a run takes a long time, it will keep running in the background, so you can ask your assistant for its outcome later.
Change the automation steps
To change an automation’s steps, like adding a condition or changing a message, describe the change to your AI assistant in plain language. Your assistant prepares the change and should check with you before it goes live. You can also ask it to test the change first.
Here are some examples:
- “Change my weekly summary automation to include overdue tasks.”
- “Change my report generation automation to rename the report to Monthly Report.”
- “Revise the introduction of my weekly department update automation to mention both team leaders and board members.”
Change the automation name, description, or schedule
Instruct your AI assistant to update the details of an automation:
- Name: “Rename my weekly summary automation to Monday summary.”
- Description: “Change the description of my Monday summary automation to say it posts to the team channel.”
- Schedule: “Run my Monday summary automation every weekday at 9 AM, London time.”
Your assistant can set a schedule on specific days and times in a time zone you choose, or at a fixed interval, like every 45 minutes, every 6 hours, once a day, or every two weeks. Schedules only apply to automations that run on a schedule, not to ones triggered by an event.
View an automation’s manifest
The manifest is the automation’s underlying definition in a structured format, including its triggers and steps. Instruct your AI assistant to show the manifest when you need to understand exactly what an automation does (for example: “Show me the manifest for my Monday summary automation.”).
Most people won’t need to see the manifest day to day, but it’s useful for sharing your exact setup when working with support, or for keeping a copy of a configuration before you make a risky change.
Check or fix an automation’s connections
Automations rely on connections to the apps they use. If a connection stops working, the automations that use it may stop working too.
To check a connection, ask your AI assistant (for example: “Is the connection for my Monday summary automation working?”) in plain language.
To fix a connection that expired or run into an error:
- Instruct your assistant to repair the connection. It’ll give you a setup link.
- Click the link.
- Authorize the app connection again.
- Ask your assistant to check the connection again.
Once the new connection is authorized, your personal automations that used the old connection move to the new one automatically. Automations in a team workspace don’t move on their own.
You can also instruct your assistant to disconnect an app account you no longer want to use. If there are any automations that are turned on and still use it, your assistant will list them first. Automations that are turned off need a new connection before they can run again.
Review the run history
Run history shows every past run of an automation with its outcome, with the most recent run first. Instruct your assistant to show the run history:
- “Show me the latest runs of my Monday summary automation.”
- “Show me the failed runs of my Monday summary automation from last week.”
To find out why a run failed, ask your assistant for the details of that run. It shows each step of the run, and where an error happened.
Delete an automation
Deleting an automation removes it along with its schedule, run history, and any unpublished changes from Todoist Automations.
If you no longer want to use an automation:
- Instruct your AI assistant to delete the automation (for example: “Delete my Monday summary automation”).
- Check that your assistant found the right automation.
- Confirm that you want to go ahead with deleting it.
In a team workspace, you can only delete the automations you created. Workspace admins can delete another member’s automation if it’s visible to the team, but not one that’s private.
Get in touch
If an automation isn’t working the way you expect it, or you’re having trouble managing your automations with your AI assistant, get in touch with us.