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Automation

Automation

Actions do the work, system triggers decide when it runs, and together they make ambient agents.
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Automation in Tool Studio has two parts. Actions are the individual operations an agent performs: call an API, run a script, generate text with an LLM, look up a user, or chain several steps together. System triggers decide when a plugin runs without a user asking, either when an event arrives from another system or on a schedule. A plugin that pairs a system trigger with a compound action is an ambient agent: it listens for a signal, interprets it, and acts, and it can still reach users by sending notifications.

Actions

Every action type accepts input arguments, so one action can be reused across plugins. When an action is invoked, those values come from a parent context such as a conversation process or a compound action.

HTTP Actions

Call REST or SOAP APIs on your business systems through a connector. Import a request from cURL or configure it by hand.

Script Actions

Write APIthon, a variation of Python, to transform data, perform calculations, or implement custom logic.

Compound Actions

Chain actions, data transformations, and logic into one reusable workflow with branching, loops, parallel steps, error handling, and user notifications.

LLM Actions

generate_text_action and generate_structured_value_action for summarization, classification, extraction, and content generation inside a workflow.

Built-in Actions

Ready-made platform operations such as user lookups, notifications, and approvals, with no connector or HTTP action to create.

System Triggers

TriggerFires whenTypical useExample
WebhookA specific event occurs in a source system, in real timeRespond to key business events”Gong call completed” → extract key details and propose CRM updates
ScheduledA Cron, Interval, or Calendar schedule comes dueKeep time-based workflows movingEvery Monday 9am → review feature requests and route to PM

For webhooks, you create a Listener that receives requests from a provider such as Salesforce or Asana; Moveworks validates the request, supporting signed secrets and one-time challenge verification, then parses it into an event and dispatches it to matching plugins. Scheduled triggers are time-based only: they do not poll an external system for state changes and do not react to real-time events, so use a webhook for those. The System Triggers overview covers how a trigger connects to a plugin’s process and the end-to-end execution flow.

Webhook Triggers

Listeners, webhook URLs, authentication and signature verification, and payload parsing.

Scheduled Triggers

Cron, Interval, and Calendar schedules with time zones and start and stop conditions.

How They Combine Into Ambient Agents

In Tool Studio, you create an ambient agent by setting a plugin’s Trigger Type to System (Webhook or Schedule). The run then follows the Listen → Understand → Act cycle:

  1. Listen. The system trigger detects the event or the schedule comes due, and Moveworks validates and parses it.
  2. Understand. The event is routed to the matching plugin, whose compound action analyzes it, for example with an LLM action, to interpret context and assess impact.
  3. Act. The compound action executes actions: API calls, scripts, or approvals. To message users, use the notify expression, which supports rich text and action buttons.
  4. Log. Each stage is recorded so you can trace the run during development and operations. See Logs.

Ambient Agents explains the pattern in depth, and the Ambient Agents Cookbook shows the architecture for each trigger type.

Build One

Each quickstart builds a complete ambient agent against the Purple Suite mock APIs.

Quickstart #5: Notification Ambient Agent

Build a simple, proactive notification from a webhook event.

Quickstart #6: Expense Approval Ambient Agent

Build an approval flow that runs when an expense event arrives.

Quickstart #7: Scheduled Trigger Ambient Agent

Build an analysis notification that runs on a schedule.

Data Types defines what action input arguments and slots can hold: actions use a fixed set of primitive and built-in types, and slots also support custom types. The Content Ingestion Platform is Moveworks-run automation of a different kind: the mirroring, processing, and loading pipeline that keeps indexed search connectors current without a plugin.