How to automate recurring content work when your team is already stretched

Let routine work move forward without another manual handoff

When approved media waits for someone to create posts, or a transcript sits unread until a teammate remembers it, the bottleneck is the handoff rather than the work. An automation watches your organization for an event, checks a few conditions, and then runs an AI agent for you. Approve a media file and drafts of every post it should become are waiting in the project a moment later.

Every automation has the same three parts:

Part	What it does
Trigger	The event that starts the run, like a media file being approved
Conditions	Optional checks that decide whether the run continues
Actions	One or more agent runs, each with its own instruction and tools

Automations are set per organization, so two brands in the same account can behave differently.

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Why use automations?

Common problems solved:

• Somebody has to remember to create posts after every approval
• The same caption instructions get retyped for each platform
• Work sits waiting because nobody noticed a file was ready
• Post drafting is the bottleneck between editing and publishing

What you get:

• Draft posts appear the moment media is approved
• One instruction per platform, written once and reused forever
• Runs you can inspect afterwards to see what the agent did
• A switch to turn any of it off without deleting the setup

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Before you start

1. Connect at least one channel to the organization. See Connect Social Platforms.
2. Know which agent should run the work. See AI Agents.
3. Have media moving through review so there is an approval to react to.

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The automation Clipflow sets up for you

When you connect your first channel, Clipflow creates an automation called Draft social posts so the workspace is useful straight away. It is a normal automation and you can edit or disable it like any other.

• Trigger: a media file’s status was updated
• Condition: media status equals Approved
• Actions: one per connected channel and supported post type

It covers these post types where your connected channels support them:

• Facebook Reel
• Instagram Reel
• Instagram Trial Reel
• LinkedIn video post
• TikTok video post
• YouTube Short

Approve an edited video and you get a draft post for each of those, titled after the project. Review them, mark them Ready, and they publish into your time slots.

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Step 1: Open automations

1. Open Organization settings from the organization switcher.
2. Choose Automations.
3. You will see every automation for this organization with its trigger and an enabled switch.

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Step 2: Pick a trigger

Choose Add automation, give it a title, then pick the event that starts it. Four events can start an automation today:

Trigger	Fires when
A new comment was posted	Anyone comments on a project, page, or media file
A new media file was added	A file is uploaded to a project
A media file’s status was updated	A file moves between Pending, Changes required, Reviewed, Approved, or Declined
A media file’s transcription finished	Clipflow finishes transcribing a file

Set the actor while you are here. The actor is who the automation acts as, and it can be an agent or a teammate. Comments and posts the automation creates are attributed to that actor.

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Step 3: Narrow it with conditions

Without conditions an automation runs on every matching event. Conditions keep it pointed at the work you actually meant.

Each condition is a field, an operator, and a value. Operators available:

• equals and not equals
• in and not in for a list of values
• present and absent
• greater than and less than for numbers

The most common condition is the one in the default automation: media status equals approved. That is what stops drafts appearing while a file is still being reviewed.

Conditions on the automation gate the whole run. Actions can carry their own conditions too, which is how one automation drafts a TikTok post for some projects and skips it for others.

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Step 4: Add actions

An action runs an AI agent. Each one holds:

• Agent: which agent does the work
• Instruction: what you want it to do, in plain language
• Tools: what the agent is allowed to use during this run
• Tool settings: for example, which channel and post type the Create Post tool should target
• Conditions: optional checks specific to this action

Actions run in order, and you can reorder or duplicate them. Duplicating is the fastest way to cover a second platform: copy the action, change the tool’s channel and post type, adjust the instruction.

Four tools can be granted to an action:

Tool	What the agent can do
Create Post	Draft a post on a chosen channel and post type
Channel & Product Lookup	Look up which channels and post types exist
Project Overview	Read the project it is working in
Hook Generator	Write hook options for the content

Grant only the tools an action needs. The agent is told which tools it has, so a short list keeps runs predictable.

Configuring Create Post

Create Post is the tool most actions use, and it has its own settings:

Setting	What it does
Platform Product	Which post type to draft, for example Instagram Trial Reel or YouTube Short. Required.
Channel	Which connected channel to post to. Leave it empty and the organization’s channel for that platform is used.
Title template	The title for the draft when the agent does not supply one. Supports variables, such as {{ title }} - Instagram Trial Reel.
Skip if Media In Use	Skip the run when the triggering media is already used in a post of this type on the same project.

Skip if Media In Use is the setting that stops duplicates. Without it, re-approving a file or running two automations over the same media gives you a second draft of a post you already have. Turn it on for any action that drafts from media.

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Step 5: Enable and test

1. Save the automation and check its enabled switch is on.
2. Trigger it for real: approve a media file that meets your conditions.
3. Open the project and confirm the drafts look right.
4. Open the automation’s runs to see what the agent did on each action.

If nothing happened, work down this list:

• Is the automation enabled?
• Did the event actually occur? A file already sitting at Approved does not re-fire.
• Do the conditions match the record? A condition on a label the project does not carry will block every run.
• Does the action’s agent still exist and have the tool it needs?

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Tips and best practices

Writing instructions

• Say what the output should be, not how the tool works. The agent already knows it has Create Post.
• Include the constraints you care about: length, tone, whether to include a link, what to do with hashtags.
• Give one instruction one job. Two platforms with different rules means two actions.

Keeping automations tidy

• Fix conditions rather than disabling an automation when it does too much. Disabling sends you back to creating posts by hand.
• Name automations after what they produce, like Draft social posts or Summarise new transcripts.
• Duplicate an action instead of rebuilding it when you add a platform.

For agencies

• Automations belong to one organization, so each client can run a different setup.
• Start a new client from the default automation, then add conditions as their workflow diverges.

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Frequently asked questions

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Related articles

• AI Agents: the agents that run your actions
• Automation Recipes: worked setups you can copy
• Bulk Schedule Instagram Trial Reels: the trial reel pipeline end to end