Routines
Test and watch your routines before you trust them
In short
A test run does real work. How to test a routine, plan for weekends and holidays, and keep an eye on the bots that watch.
A routine you haven't tested is a guess on a schedule. Chapter 5 covers how to try a routine safely, what to tell it when information is missing, and how to use the night shift to watch for changes outside your businesses.
Test while you watch
Run a new routine once on demand while you're there. Treat the test like the real thing, because it usually is: if the routine changes files or checks sites, the test does too. Start with routines that only read and draft. Then check four things. Did it pull the right information? Did it put the result where you expected? Did it stop where it should hand things to you? If something was missing, did it say so, or quietly use old information?
Plan for missing data
Tell every routine what to do when something isn't there, for example: "If the sales numbers aren't available, say so in the report instead of guessing."
Watch the things that change
Each business depends on outside things that can shift without warning: supplier prices, the rules of a store you sell through, what people are searching for, what similar businesses are doing. A weekly routine can check the handful you care about and write a short note on what changed. Most weeks it will say nothing new. That's the point.
Checklist
- Run each new routine once while you watch, starting with read-and-draft jobs.
- Check where its output landed and whether it stopped at the handoff.
- Add a "say so instead of guessing" rule for missing data.
- Let it run alone for a week and read every result.
- Have the briefing Bot flag any routine that didn't run or ran with gaps.
- Add one weekly watch routine per business for outside changes.
Weekends and rest
Done right, you can go away for a long weekend and come back to finished research, drafts and summaries, with nothing sent that you didn't approve. Routines can still fail quietly, which is why you glance at the briefing daily. But don't sit up at midnight checking whether they ran. The briefing will tell you in the morning.