Documentation Index
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So you have an agent and it’s good. You’ve given it the right tools, the right instructions, maybe even some skills. Now the question is, how do you make it work without you?
That’s what triggers are for. A trigger is something that wakes up your agent automatically. It can be time-based, like “every Friday at 8 AM,” or event-based, like “every time a new row lands in this Google Sheet.”
Let me show you a few examples. First, scheduled triggers. Our sales agent needs to send a pipeline report every Friday morning. I go to the agent’s config, open Triggers, click ”+ Trigger,” and describe the schedule in plain English: “every Friday at 8 AM.” Then I write the prompt the agent receives when it fires. Done. Every Friday, the agent wakes up, pulls from Salesforce, and emails the report.
You can also set up event-based triggers. Say a prospect fills out a Google Form. I set the trigger to watch for new form submissions, then write a prompt template: “New submission from , . Research them, score the lead 1-100, and email the result to sales.” When the form comes in, those placeholders get replaced with real values, and the agent runs.
Same agents you’ve already built. The only difference is what wakes them up.
Triggers for Your Agents
Triggers let your agent work without you. Set a schedule or connect an event, and the agent runs on its own.
You’ve built an agent. You’ve made it good. The next step is to stop triggering it yourself.
With triggers, your agent wakes up on its own, does the work, and delivers the result. Here’s what that looks like:
- Sales review prep, every Friday at 8 AM. Your sales agent pulls the latest pipeline data from Salesforce, summarizes the week’s activity, and emails you a report before the team meeting.
- Meeting prep, 15 minutes before each meeting. Your agent sees the calendar event, researches the external attendees, and sends you a briefing while the context is fresh.
- Lead qualification on every form submission. A prospect fills out your Google Form. Your agent reads your ICP document, researches the lead, scores them 1-100, and emails the result to the right rep. A lead scores 87/100? “Book the demo.”
Same agents you’ve already built. The only difference is what wakes them up.
How Triggers Work
Every trigger follows the same pattern. Something fires, and the agent receives a prompt, just like a chat message.
The trigger is either time-based (a schedule you define) or event-based (something happening in one of your apps). Either way, the agent gets a prompt and runs.
Scheduled Triggers
A scheduled trigger runs your agent at a time you choose. To create one, go to your agent’s configuration page, open the Triggers section, and click ”+ Trigger.” You set three things:
- Name: a label so you can find it later
- Schedule: when it should run
- Prompt: the message your agent receives when it fires
You don’t need to write cron expressions. Just describe the schedule in plain language: “every weekday at 9 AM”, “every 4 hours”, “first Monday of each month.” Gumloop’s AI-powered scheduler converts it for you.
Your agents can also schedule their own triggers through conversation. Tell your agent “remind me to check emails every weekday at 9 AM” and it creates the trigger itself. Ask it to “show my active schedules” and it lists them. This means your agent can manage its own work over time without you touching the settings page.
Event-Based Triggers
Event-based triggers wake up your agent when something happens in another app. A new email, a Slack message, a form submission, a new row in a spreadsheet.
Setting one up takes three steps:
- Pick the trigger. Choose the app and event type (new email in Gmail, message in a Slack channel, new row in Google Sheets, etc.).
- Connect and configure. Link your credentials and set the specifics: which Gmail label to watch, which Slack channel to monitor, which sheet to track.
- Write the prompt template. Define what your agent should do, using template variables that get replaced with real event data.
For example, a Google Forms trigger for lead qualification might look like:
“New form submission from {Name}, {Company}. Read our ICP document, research them, and score this lead 1-100. Email the result to the sales team.”
When the trigger fires, those placeholders become actual values from the form submission. Your agent processes it just like it would a chat message.