Playbooks

Documentation Index

Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.aident.ai/llms.txt

Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

A Playbook is the canvas Aident uses to describe an automation. It has three sections, and all of them appear on screen at once when you open the editor. The shape is the same for every playbook, so once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. You shape a playbook by talking to Aiden in the side chat — describe what you want, and Aiden updates the relevant section. Each section below explains what lives there and what it controls.

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The Three Sections

The headings on the canvas read 🎯 Goal, ⚙️ Integrations, 📄 Plan, stacked top-to-bottom.

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🎯 Goal

The Goal section is a short write-up of what the playbook is for — the problem it solves, the scope it covers, and how you’ll know it worked. It’s the source of truth Aiden uses when drafting and refining everything else. A complete Goal usually expresses:

• What should happen — the outcome the playbook is responsible for.
• When it’s done — what success looks like.
• Where the result goes — who sees it, and in which channel or format.

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⚙️ Integrations

The Integrations section lists every app the playbook depends on, shown as integration pills. Each pill carries a color that signals its readiness. Integrations aren’t picked manually. Aiden infers them from the Goal and the Steps in your Plan, and the pill list updates whenever the playbook changes.

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📄 Plan

The Plan section is the executable part of the playbook. It’s split into three pieces — Input, Steps, and Output — that together describe how a single run flows from beginning to end.

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Input

The Input card at the top of Plan describes what the playbook expects to receive each time it runs. Inputs come from a manual run, a trigger event, or a scheduled run. There are two shapes:

• Freeform — a single text prompt.
• Fields — named pieces of data with types: String, Number, Boolean, Date, Array, or Object.

The number on the Input card reflects how many fields are configured. Clicking the card opens the Input drawer, where you switch between Freeform and Fields and define each field’s name, description, type, and whether it’s required.

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Steps

The Steps are the ordered list of actions the playbook follows. Each step is a line of plain English that describes one thing the playbook does, in the order it does it. Two things show up inside a step:

• Skills — the named actions Aident knows how to perform, shown as pills inline in the step.
• Input fields — if you’ve defined any, steps reference them by name so values flow through.

Aiden drafts the Steps from your Goal and refines them as the Goal evolves. Asking Aiden to add, remove, reorder, or reword a step from the side chat is the normal way to change them.

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Output

The Output card at the bottom of Plan describes the shape of what the playbook returns when it finishes. The shape determines how the result appears on the Dashboard and how downstream tools or playbooks consume it. There are three shapes:

• Freeform — plain text. Best for summaries, drafts, and reports.
• Structured — named fields with types. Best when another tool or playbook will read the result.
• CSV — rows and columns. Best for lists you’ll open in a spreadsheet.

For Structured and CSV outputs, each field or column has a name and a type, the same set as Input fields.

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Working with Aiden

The chat panel beside the canvas is how you change a playbook. Asking Aiden to “tighten the Goal”, “add a step that posts to Slack”, or “switch from Gmail to Outlook” updates the right section automatically. The canvas stays read-only while Aiden is editing — that’s how you know the change is in flight.

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Next Steps