Beyond Simple Automation: Building Agentic Workflows with trigger.do

In the world of software, automation is king. We've moved from manual tasks to simple "if this, then that" (IFTTT) automations that handle basic chores. But what happens when your business logic is more complex than a simple webhook? What if you need to orchestrate a multi-step, dynamic process that responds to events with intelligence and flexibility?

This is where traditional automation tools fall short and a new paradigm emerges: agentic workflows. These aren't just linear sequences; they are intelligent, code-driven processes that can handle branching logic, interact with multiple systems, and adapt to context.

At trigger.do, we believe the future of business automation is built on this principle. It’s about defining your business logic as code once and triggering it from anywhere with a simple, secure API call.

What Are Event-Driven Triggers?

At its core, an event-driven trigger is a powerful yet simple concept. It's a mechanism that listens for a specific event and, in response, initiates a predefined action or workflow.

• An Event Happens: A user signs up, a payment is processed, a file is uploaded to storage, or a nightly schedule ticks over.
• A Trigger Fires: A dedicated endpoint on trigger.do receives a signal—usually an API trigger—notifying it of the event.
• A Workflow Begins: The trigger instantly kicks off the corresponding workflow you've built, passing along any relevant data from the event.

This model decouples the cause (the event) from the effect (the workflow), giving you incredible flexibility to build, maintain, and scale your automated processes.

From Simple Notifications to Complex Agentic Workflows

Let's start simple. You could use trigger.do to send a Slack notification every time a new user subscribes to your "premium" plan. That's a useful, single-step automation.

But an agentic workflow takes this much further. Imagine the "new premium user" event triggers a process that:

1. Sends a personalized welcome email with the user's name.
2. Provisions a dedicated database for their account.
3. Adds the user to your CRM (like Salesforce or HubSpot) and tags them as "premium."
4. Checks the user's region and assigns them to the appropriate customer success manager.
5. Sends a final confirmation to the user once all resources are ready.

This entire multi-step, conditional process is an agentic workflow. It's your business logic, executed as code, initiated by a single, secure trigger. You define it once, and trigger.do orchestrates it every single time, without fail.

How It Works: Business-as-Code with a Simple API

The beauty of trigger.do lies in its developer-first approach. You don't need a clunky drag-and-drop interface. You just need a simple SDK and an API key.

Let's look at how you would trigger a new user onboarding workflow using our TypeScript SDK.

import { Do } from '@do-sdk/client';

const client = new Do({ apiKey: process.env.DO_API_KEY });

// Trigger a new user onboarding workflow. Run your business as code.
async function onboardNewUser(user: { id: string; email: string; }) {
  try {
    const { workflowRunId } = await client.trigger('new-user-onboarding', {
      payload: {
        userId: user.id,
        email: user.email,
        plan: 'premium',
      },
    });
    console.log(`Workflow ${workflowRunId} triggered successfully.`);
    return { success: true, workflowRunId };
  } catch (error) {
    console.error('Failed to trigger workflow:', error);
    return { success: false, error };
  }
}

// Example: Trigger the workflow for a new user signup
onboardNewUser({ id: 'usr_abc123', email: 'jane.doe@example.com' });

Let's break this down:

1. Initialize the Client: You securely initialize the client with your API key. All trigger.do endpoints are protected by default, so only authorized services can run your workflows.
2. Call client.trigger(): This is the core action. You specify the unique name of your workflow (new-user-onboarding) that you've already defined in your trigger.do project.
3. Pass a Payload: The payload object is where the magic happens. You can pass any JSON data your workflow needs. This allows you to create dynamic, context-aware automations that operate on specific information like user IDs, order details, or system events.

With just a few lines of code, you've kicked off a potentially complex and critical business process from anywhere in your application stack.

Powerful Use Cases for Workflow Automation

Once you start thinking in terms of triggers and agentic workflows, the possibilities are endless.

• CI/CD Pipelines: Trigger a deployment workflow after a successful build on your CI server. The workflow could run integration tests, push to a staging environment, and notify the team on Slack.
• Customer Support Automation: When a high-priority ticket is logged, trigger a workflow that creates a Jira issue, pages the on-call engineer, and sends an acknowledgment to the customer.
• Financial Reconciliation: Run a scheduled trigger every night to reconcile payments from Stripe, update your accounting software, and flag any discrepancies for manual review.
• AI-Powered Content Moderation: When a user uploads an image, trigger a workflow that sends the image to an AI service for analysis. Based on the results, the image is either approved or flagged for human review.

Your Questions, Answered

What kind of workflows can I trigger?
If you can code it, you can trigger it with trigger.do. From simple, single-step actions like sending a notification to complex, multi-step agentic processes like customer onboarding, data processing, or financial reconciliation.

How do I secure my trigger endpoints?
Security is paramount. All trigger.do API endpoints are secured by default using API keys. You can manage keys, set fine-grained permissions, and monitor all usage from your dashboard, ensuring complete control over who can initiate your workflows.

Can I pass data to a triggered workflow?
Absolutely. The payload allows you to pass any JSON data with your trigger. This is essential for creating dynamic, context-aware workflows that operate on specific information like user details, order data, or system events.

Trigger Actions. Automate Anything.

Stop wrestling with brittle scripts and limited automation platforms. With trigger.do, you can build robust, scalable, and intelligent workflow automation that's as sophisticated as your business logic demands.

Define your business-as-code and gain the power to trigger it from anywhere.

Ready to move beyond simple automation? Get started with trigger.do today and build your first agentic workflow in minutes.