Building AI Agents that Run on a Schedule

This guide walks you through building a website monitoring agent that checks for changes daily and sends an email if updates are detected.

MindStudio enables you to schedule AI agents to run automatically at specific times. This is useful for automating repetitive workflows like monitoring web content, generating reports, or triggering notifications without manual input.

Use Case: Website Change Tracker

In this example, we’ll build an AI agent that checks for changes on a website (e.g. OpenAI’s news page) each morning and emails a summary of those changes.

Step 1: Add the “Track Website Changes” AI Module

• Create a new workflow and add the Track Website Changes module.

• In the configuration panel:

  • Enter the target URL (e.g., https://openai.com/blog).

  • Use the default variable names unless you need to customize them.

  • Set a Detection Prompt, such as: Any changes to the main content of the website. Specifically, we are looking for new news stories.

Step 2: Handle Detected Changes

You’ll configure two outcomes:

• No Changes: Route to an End Workflow block.

• Changes Detected: Route to a Send Email block.

In the Send Email block:

• Connect your email account via the integrations menu (gear icon).

• Set a subject like: Changes Detected on OpenAI News

• Use the {{changes}} variable as the email body to show the summary of detected content updates.

Step 3: Set the Schedule

Click the Start Block, and in the Trigger section on the right:

1. Change the Run Mode from “On Demand” to Scheduled.

2. Click Add to define your schedule.

3. Use natural language or presets like: Every morning at 9:00 AM

4. Set your Time Zone, e.g., America/Los_Angeles.

5. Click Generate Schedule, then Save.

The agent will now run automatically each morning.

Step 4: Preview & Test

Use the Preview button and run the agent in the Debugger:

• On the first run, it will detect all visible content (no baseline exists yet).

• On subsequent runs, it will only email you if changes are detected.

Summary

Scheduled AI agents are powerful for automating:

• News monitoring

• Report generation

• Notifications

• Daily or weekly workflows

To configure:

1. Use the Track Website Changes module.

2. Send detected changes via Email.

3. Set the schedule from the Start block.

You now have a self-running AI agent that keeps you informed—automatically, every day.