Trigger

A schedule, event, condition, message, request, or manual action that initiates an agent or workflow run.

Triggers include cron schedules, webhooks, queue messages, file changes, threshold alerts, API calls, and user actions. Delivery semantics vary: an event can arrive late, more than once, out of order, or not at all. The run therefore needs an idempotency key, source event identity, and policy for retries and concurrency when duplicates matter.

Builder example

A time trigger is easier for some periodic work, while an event trigger avoids delay and unnecessary polling for others. Choose from the real source behavior and latency requirement rather than treating time-based runs as a mandatory maturity stage.

Common confusion: A trigger decides when a run starts; a schedule decides how often a time-based run repeats. Every scheduled agent has a trigger, but not every trigger is a clock. Event-based and condition-based triggers start a run with no fixed time at all, firing only when their watched thing happens.