Automations: Grok on a schedule — or watching your inbox.
On July 16, SpaceXAI shipped Automations: jobs Grok runs on its own. You describe the work once, choose when it runs — a fixed schedule or the moment a matching email lands — and Grok does it and reports back. It's on grok.com and in the iOS and Android apps now, and the scheduled kind is available to everyone, including free accounts. Here's how to build one, and the one part worth thinking twice about.
01 What shipped
| Fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Announced | July 16, 2026 |
| What it is | Saved jobs Grok runs on its own — on a schedule or an email trigger — then reports back |
| Where | grok.com/automations and the Grok app on iOS and Android |
| Who gets it | Scheduled automations: everyone. Email triggers: included with SuperGrok |
| How it reports | Email, app notification, both — or neither, if you'd rather check the run history yourself |
02 Build one in five minutes
The build screen is closer to writing a chat message than programming — that's the point.
- Start it. Go to grok.com/automations and hit New Automation — or skip the form entirely and ask in chat: "check the news every morning and flag anything about pricing." Grok sets the automation up for you. There are also suggested templates to start from.
- Write the instructions like any prompt: describe the job, attach files for context, type
@to mention a connector, add skills, pick a mode. - Pick the trigger. Schedules run once, daily, weekdays, weekly, monthly, or yearly at a time you choose in your timezone. Or use an email trigger (more on that below).
- Choose how it reports back — email, app notification, both, or neither.
- Test it with Run now. Don't wait until 8am tomorrow to find out your prompt was vague.
Two details that make this better than a reminder app: every run is a fresh request — same instructions, current data — and every run is a full conversation saved to the automation's history. Open any run, read the whole thread, and pick up where Grok left off. Automations can be paused, resumed, edited, or deleted anytime.
03 The email trigger is the interesting one
Scheduled AI jobs aren't new — ChatGPT and Gemini have offered versions of them for a while. The part with real workflow value is the trigger: point an automation at your inbox with filters on sender, recipient, or subject, and when a matching email arrives, the automation fires with that email as context — Grok responds to the actual message, not a generic prompt. An invoice arrives and gets summarized into your task list. A specific client writes and you get a drafted reply waiting.
Try it this week
- Build one scheduled automation on a free account — a morning brief before you're up, or a weekly check on a topic you track
- Use Run now immediately after saving; tighten the instructions until the output is worth reading
- If you have SuperGrok and want email triggers: start with a narrow filter (one sender), and review the first week of runs before trusting it
This week's challenge
Pick one thing you look up manually every day — news on your industry, a competitor's pricing page, tomorrow's calendar squeeze. Turn it into a scheduled automation, run it for three days, then judge it like an employee: did it save you time, or did you re-check its work anyway? Keep it if it earns its spot. Delete it if it doesn't — automation you don't trust is just a second inbox.