Automation

Automation is recurring work Polo runs on a schedule, such as a weekly cost review or a daily backup check. Each run creates a normal task for an agent. Changes to your systems still wait for approval.

Uptime monitors are also checked on a schedule, but they are managed on Incidents. See Incidents and uptime.

Schedule a task

You need at least one agent first. Administrators and operators manage recurring work.

1. Open Automation and press Schedule a task.
2. Enter a Name, such as “Weekly cost review”.
3. Choose the Agent that runs the task each time.
4. Under When it runs, set Repeat every (minutes). Optionally set First run, in your local time. Leave it empty to start after one interval.
5. Under What Polo does, enter the Task title and write What should Polo do? the way you would assign the task by hand.
6. Optional: set the Environment, Service and Repository, and an AI cost limit per task (USD). Leave the limit empty to use the agent’s own.
7. Under Tools the task may use, tick the tools each run gets. Each run gets only the tools you tick here, from the agent’s permissions.
8. Press Schedule task.

Tip

Write the request so it stands on its own. A run starts without a person in the conversation, so name the service, the time window and what the report should contain.

The list of recurring tasks

Recurring tasks shows each schedule with what runs next and the last task it created.

State	Meaning
Scheduled	It runs at the time shown as Next run
Paused	It will not run until you resume it

For each schedule you can:

• Pause or Resume it;
• Archive it, which stops future runs. Tasks it already created stay available;
• open the latest task it created.

To change what a schedule does, archive it and schedule a new one.

What a run can do

• A run is an ordinary task. You find it on Tasks, and it has the same result, activity and cost view as any other. See Give Polo work.
• The tools are fixed when you create the schedule. Giving the agent more tools later does not add them to an existing schedule.
• A tool that makes a change still proposes it for approval, unless a standing approval covers that exact change. With nobody around to approve, the request waits until it expires.
• Each run has an AI cost limit: the one you set, or the agent’s.

Background jobs

Schedules and monitors are started by a background scheduler that runs beside Polo. If it is not running, Automation and Home show a warning:

• Background jobs are not running, so scheduled tasks and monitors are paused. The scheduler has stopped. The message says when it last checked in.
• Background jobs are not set up. No scheduler is configured, so nothing can run on a schedule.

On the hosted product this is Plungo’s to fix. If you run Polo yourself, see Operate Polo.

Examples

• A weekly cost review by a FinOps agent with its cost and savings reads ticked.
• A daily backup check by an agent that can list the backups of a PostgreSQL connection.
• A weekly CI reliability report by an agent with the Report CI reliability tool for a repository.

Limits

• The interval is set in whole minutes. There is no calendar or cron syntax.
• A paused schedule runs nothing, and the area it serves shows as Paused on Settings → What Polo can do.
• A workspace can hold at most 100 schedules.
• Schedules have been verified against local test fixtures: the scheduler created the tasks on time. See Capabilities for the level of each tool a run may use.