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Testing & enabling your automation

Finish setup first

Before an automation can go live, every placeholder value must be filled in. While any remain, a setup checklist appears below the builder toolbar and the enable toggle stays locked. Work through each item — open the relevant step, replace the REPLACE_ME_… or ${UPPER_SNAKE} value with a real one, and save.

Secrets

Sensitive values — API keys, tokens, signing secrets — go into secret fields. They're encrypted at rest, so once saved they're never shown back to you in plain text. To change a secret, enter a new value; leaving it untouched keeps the existing one.

The Run panel

Test a flow from the collapsible Run panel at the bottom of the builder. It has two modes, chosen from the dropdown next to the run button:

  • Preview — a dry-run against a sample event. No side effects, instant result: it tells you whether the automation would fire and walks the steps without making any real calls. Use this while you're still building.

  • Simulate — fires a real run; the worker executes every step end-to-end, including real outbound calls. Simulate is only available once the automation has been saved and enabled.

As a run plays out, each step node lights up with its result — succeeded, failed, or skipped — so you can spot a problem quickly.

Settings

The Settings panel — opened from the title chip or the gear icon in the builder — collects the automation's Title, Subtitle, trigger Category (its event type), and Status (the enable toggle) in one place.

Enable it

When the setup checklist is clear and a Preview looks right, switch the automation's Status to enabled. From that point, real matching events trigger it — and Simulate becomes available for a full end-to-end test. The toggle stays locked while any placeholder is unfilled. You can disable an automation again at any time: disabling stops new runs, while a run already in flight finishes on its own.

Next

Continue with Monitoring runs & organizing automations.