What is an automation trigger?
A trigger is the event that starts a workflow. Everything after it — the actions, the branches, the agent steps — waits until the trigger fires, and the trigger hands the rest of the flow its data.
Most triggers in Taskade belong to a connector: a new email in Gmail, a new order in Shopify, a new issue in GitHub. Three do not. A Taskade automation can also start when a form is submitted, when a webhook arrives, or when an AI agent decides to run it. Those three are the subject of this category, because they are the entry points that do not depend on another product deciding something happened first.
What are the three connector-free triggers?
- Form Submitted — you publish a Taskade form, someone fills it in, and every field they entered becomes data the rest of the flow can read. This is the entry point for intake, requests, applications, feedback and registrations.
- Webhook Received — Taskade gives the flow a URL. Anything that can send an HTTP request can start it: your own backend, a payment processor, a monitoring service, a partner system, a script on a server.
- Agent Tool — an AI agent starts the flow itself. The automation is registered as one of the agent's own tools, so the agent can decide, mid-conversation and mid-task, that this workflow is the right thing to run.
Why does the Agent Tool trigger matter?
Because it reverses the direction of the work.
In a conventional automation platform, the AI sits inside the pipe. Something else fires the trigger, the flow reaches a step, the model is asked a question, and the flow carries on. The model is a tool the workflow uses.
With an Agent Tool trigger, the workflow is a tool the agent uses. The agent is holding the conversation, working the ticket, or reading the account — and when it needs an order looked up, an expense filed, a slot booked or a report pulled, it runs the automation that does that. Nobody clicked anything. Nothing else fired.
That is the difference between an automation that contains AI and an agent that can act. Seven of the sixteen flows below are built on it, and each of those seven also has an agent step inside, which closes the loop: the agent starts the flow, and the agent does the judgment within it.
How do you choose a trigger?
- Start with Form Submitted when a person supplies the information. You get structured fields instead of parsed prose, and the form is the interface.
- Start with Webhook Received when a system you already run knows first. If you can send an HTTP request from it, it can start a Taskade flow, even if there is no connector for it.
- Start with Agent Tool when the decision to run belongs to an agent rather than to a clock, a person or an event.
- Start with a connector trigger when a product you use already publishes the event — a new row, a new order, a new message. Taskade connects to 100+ apps in both directions.
Who uses these triggers?
Operations teams, whose intake arrives on a form rather than in an inbox. Engineering and platform teams, who already emit events and want one of them to start real work. Support and sales teams running agents that need to do something, not only answer. And solo operators, who get the most out of the Agent Tool trigger of anyone, because one agent with a set of automations behind it covers the ground a small team would.
How do you set one up?
- Open the Automations tab in your workspace and add a new automation.
- Pick a trigger: Form Submitted, Webhook Received, Agent Tool, or one from a connector.
- Add the actions that do the work, and a branch or a loop where the flow genuinely takes a path or repeats.
- For an Agent Tool trigger, open the agent in the Agents tab and give it this automation as one of its tools. See custom agents.
- Turn the automation on with the toggle in the top-right corner.
- Or describe the outcome at Taskade Genesis and let it wire the trigger, the steps and the agent for you.
Where should you go next?
- All automation categories — the full index.
- AI agent automation — what the agent does once the flow is running.
- Automation logic — branches, loops, filters and waits.
- Automation workflows — the same building blocks, framed end to end.
