What are ARIA Automations?
Operations that run on their own, for your business and your life, inside ARIA, on your machine. You describe the outcome in a sentence and ARIA builds it as a flow of steps: what starts it, what it does, which of her tools, agents and connections it uses, and what happens when something fails. Her clock runs it from there, or a file, a row, a page or a copy wakes it. Plain steps run with no AI call. When a step needs judgment, ARIA herself runs it. Anything only you can decide waits for you in one place, called Needs you.
Is this just a set of ready-made automations?
No. The library is a shortcut, not the product. ARIA can build essentially any operation you can describe, from the clock, a file, a database row, a page, a copy or a live stream, through her own tools, her agents, any connection she has forged, and her own mind, to a notice, a document, a message or a write to a service. The ready-made automations from her agents are there for when you would rather pick than say it.
Is it only for business?
No. The same engine runs your personal life: a morning briefing from your calendar, a price you're waiting to drop, a page you keep checking, a weekly review saved as a document, your website or the NAS at home going down. Business and personal automations sit side by side in one ARIA, on your machine, and each one only touches what you granted it.
Do I have to build the flows by hand?
No. Tell ARIA what should run on its own, in the chat or in the Build it box of the Automations view. She drafts it, checks it, and rehearses it on sample data with every side effect simulated. Every step is visible on the canvas, and you change any of them by asking her in words. When you ask her in your own chat, she builds it and switches it on. When she proposes one on her own initiative, it stays a proposal in Needs you until you say yes.
Can ARIA actually think inside an automation?
Yes. A judgment step is ARIA herself: her mind, with what she remembers about your business, her tools and her agents, running inside the flow with a focused instruction. She reads and judges. If her mind decides something needs you, the run parks in Needs you with her own words, and your yes answers that one step. Every run records what her mind spent. Most steps never call a model at all.
Does every run cost AI tokens?
No. Most steps are plain work, like fetching a page, reading a file, comparing, remembering or notifying, and they run with no model call at all. A step that needs judgment uses the model you chose, your own key or a model on your machine, and the run records exactly what it spent. We don't bill per task, per step or per run.
What can an automation do without asking me?
Exactly what you granted when you switched it on: the tools it lists, and nothing more. Your switch is the standing approval, so those granted steps run without asking again. Money moves only under a spending cap you set for that connection, or with your yes naming the amount, and never on a background run. Legal acts ask every time. What only a human may answer, and anything her mind decides needs you, still parks in Needs you. In the ready-made automations, messages to other people ask first by default, and you can turn that off.
What happens when something breaks?
You hear about it the first time, in plain words, with the reason. The ready-made automations report a source that stops answering once, and once more when it is back. After five failures in a row an automation stops itself and sends a critical alert. If one wakes itself too often, the loop guard switches it off and tells you; nothing can ever switch one on by itself. If ARIA closes in the middle of a run, that run is marked interrupted when she starts again, never blindly run a second time.
Do automations run when ARIA is closed? Can a service reach one from the internet?
They run while ARIA runs. The engine lives inside her on your machine and sleeps while she is locked. When she is back, anything overdue runs once, so missed runs never pile up. An automation's own web address listens on this machine only: a program on the same computer can call it, the internet cannot. A public address for webhooks from outside is not live today.
Where do my data and keys live?
On your machine. Automations, their runs and their records live in an encrypted database that opens only while ARIA is unlocked. Keys and sign-ins live in ARIA's vault as bytes, never inside a flow, and ARIA never sees them. A step reaches the internet only over HTTPS to public addresses, unless you mark it as being on your own network. When a step uses a cloud model, only that request goes to the provider you picked; with a local model, nothing does.
