Creating and Running Playbooks

Last updated: June 11, 2026

Creating and Running Playbooks

Playbooks are repeatable workflows you build once and run whenever you need them. Use playbooks to automate recurring processes — weekly syncs, executive briefings, goal health checks, onboarding checklists — so your team spends less time assembling updates and more time acting on them.

What Is a Playbook?

A playbook is a sequence of steps that Rhythms executes on your behalf. Each step can pull live data from your goals, run an AI analysis, generate a document, send a notification, or trigger an integration. You configure it once; Rhythms handles the execution.

Playbooks can run: - On demand — you trigger them manually whenever you need - On a schedule — daily, weekly, or custom cadence (configured in playbook settings)

Creating a Playbook

  1. Open the Playbooks section from the left navigation
  2. Click New Playbook
  3. Give the playbook a name and optional description
  4. Add steps using the step builder:
    • Data step — pull in goal data, check-in history, or integration data
    • AI step — have Rhythms analyze or summarize the data from prior steps
    • Document step — generate or update a document (layout) with the output
    • Notification step — send a Slack message or email with the results
  5. Configure each step's inputs and outputs
  6. Click Save

You can also describe what you want to a playbook in the chat interface — "Create a weekly executive briefing playbook that summarizes red and yellow goals and sends it to the leadership team in Slack" — and Rhythms will build the steps for you.

Configuring a Schedule

To run a playbook automatically:

  1. Open the playbook and click Settings (⚙)
  2. Under Schedule, toggle on Run automatically
  3. Choose your cadence:
    • Daily (select time)
    • Weekly (select day and time)
    • Custom (cron expression)
  4. Save

Scheduled playbooks run in the background. You'll receive a notification when each run completes (or if it fails).

Running a Playbook Manually

  1. Open the playbook
  2. Click Run now

Rhythms executes each step in order and shows you a live run log. You can view the output of each step as it completes.

Viewing Run History

Open the playbook and click History to see all past runs. Each entry shows: - Run timestamp - Status (Completed / Failed) - Output summary

Click any run to see the full step-by-step log and output.

Editing a Playbook

Open the playbook and click Edit. You can add, remove, reorder, or reconfigure any step. Changes take effect on the next run — they don't retroactively alter past run history.

Duplicating a Playbook

To use an existing playbook as a starting point:

  1. Open the playbook
  2. Click ⋯ → Duplicate

The duplicate is created as a private draft you can modify without affecting the original.

Deleting a Playbook

  1. Open the playbook
  2. Click ⋯ → Delete
  3. Confirm

Deleting a playbook cancels any scheduled runs. This action cannot be undone.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can a playbook update goals automatically? Yes — playbooks can write check-ins and update goal values as part of a step, if configured to do so.

What happens if a step fails? The run stops at the failing step and logs the error. Subsequent steps do not execute. You'll receive a failure notification if notifications are enabled.

Can I run a playbook from the chat interface? Yes — type "Run my [playbook name] playbook" in the Rhythms chat to trigger it on demand.

How many playbooks can I create? There's no limit on the number of playbooks per workspace.

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