OpenHands Automations

Create and manage automations that run inside an OpenHands agent server — triggered by cron schedules or webhook events (GitHub, custom services). Windows PowerShell equivalents for the automation API curl examples and shell-variable conventions are in references/windows.md.

Automation Creation Process

The agent must follow these steps when creating an automation:

• Quickly check that you can access the correct automations backend using the auth mechanism below
• Quickly check that you can access any necessary integrations (e.g. GitHub, Slack); if access fails, inform the user and stop
• Ask the user for any necessary information, e.g. if you need the name of a Slack channel or GitHub repo to proceed
• Write the code or prompt that will be sent to the automations backend inside the current workspace
• Show the code to the user with the canvas_ui tool if available, otherwise present it in a fenced code block in your reply
• Message the user with a concise summary of how the automation will behave, and ask if they are ready to deploy it

Architecture

Two components work together to run automations: