Do not index
Do not index
When I first started building my own AI agents, they were basically fancy on-demand assistants. I’d ping them from Slack and say “hey, write this” or “summarize that.” It worked. Kind of. But something felt off.
The real problem was that there were no triggers. Every time I wanted the agent to do something, I had to remember to tell it. That meant a lot of potential value was just sitting there, unused.
After a year of building and refining my own swarm of agents, here’s what I’ve learned: triggers are everything. They're what separate a passive tool from a self-running system. A good trigger turns an idea into action without me having to babysit it. A bad trigger, or no trigger at all, kills the value before it starts.
The Two Types of Triggers I Use
Now I design every agent with one of two types of triggers: event-driven or scheduled.
Event-driven triggers respond to something happening in the world:
- A new support ticket comes in
- A customer submits a feature request
- Someone fills out a form
- A Slack message matches a certain pattern
These are the best triggers when you want to respond quickly to new information. My support agent, for example, kicks off instantly when a new ticket hits the inbox. The trigger is the signal. No extra effort from me.
Scheduled triggers are more about consistency over time.
- Every morning at 9 AM, check for tasks in the backlog
- Every Friday, summarize the week’s customer feedback
- Every hour, scan for bugs flagged by QA
These are great for things you’d otherwise forget to do or just don’t want to think about. My “project manager” agent checks the backlog every morning and moves the next task into play. I don’t have to touch it. It just works.
The key here is deciding the right rhythm for the task. Daily? Real-time? Weekly? The trigger defines the cadence of your agent’s value.
What Happens Without a Trigger
Before I added real triggers, most of my agents just sat around. Technically available, but practically useless. I’d forget they existed. Or I’d be too busy to go call them manually. They weren’t part of the workflow. They were off to the side.
It’s like having a brilliant intern standing silently in the corner, waiting for you to give them a task. That’s not leverage. That’s overhead.
Once I designed clear triggers, the whole system started to feel alive. Stuff just started happening. Tasks got picked up. Tickets got responses. Feedback got summarized. The agents weren’t waiting on me. They were running on their own.
Designing a Good Trigger
When I build a new agent, I now start by asking one question. What’s the trigger?
That means:
- What’s the signal that work needs to be done?
- Where does that signal live (Slack, database, Notion, calendar)?
- How often should the agent check for it?
- What kind of input will it need once triggered?
The more specific the trigger, the easier the agent is to build and the more valuable it becomes. Vague triggers like “when I need content” don’t work. But “every Monday at 10, generate three post ideas based on last week’s newsletter” is a strong loop.
Final Thoughts
If you’re building your own AI swarm, or even just one or two agents, focus on the triggers first. A good agent doesn’t wait around for instructions. It knows when to act.
Triggers turn your agents from tools into teammates. They give you leverage. And they make the whole system feel a little bit magic.
If you liked this, I write more about how I build and use personal AI systems in my newsletter: The Building Blocks
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