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Browse and install automations

How the Automations catalog works — the side panel a card opens, the install wizard and its preflight, reinstalling and uninstalling, and updating every built-in automation at once.

4 min read

The Automations catalog (Automations in the sidebar) is where Owners, Admins, and Developers browse every automation available to the organization and decide which ones are installed. This page covers the catalog itself — the side panel a card opens, the install wizard, and the reinstall, uninstall, and update actions that follow. What each shipped automation actually does lives on Built-in automations; the mental model for the pieces an automation bundles lives on Automation concepts.

Installing one

Click a card and its side panel opens — the same click-to-preview pattern Settings > Integrations uses for its own catalog. The panel lists what installing adds: its pages, workflows, agents, skills, and the integrations it requires, plus which project it targets if it's project-scoped. Click Install and the wizard opens.

The wizard walks only the steps this automation actually needs: a Project step if it's project-scoped and you didn't open it from inside one already; a Review changes step if installing would overwrite files already on disk; an Install step that confirms what's ready and names what still needs connecting; an Agent mode step for every agent that can run on your own credentials instead of the platform's, followed by a connect step for each provider key or required integration that choice still leaves unconnected; and a Done step. Every setup step is skippable — finish it later from the automation's own Finish setup checklist.

The install preflight

Reinstalling or re-uploading over an automation that already changed some of its files triggers a Review changes step before anything is touched. For a single automation, the step lists every file the install would overwrite and asks you to confirm replacing them all with the automation's own versions in one step — there's no per-file pick-and-choose. Installing a bundle reviews per member automation instead: each member gets its own collapsible section and its own confirmation, so you can see exactly which of the bundle's several automations touch files you changed. Either way, a workflow's own steps are exempt from this check — see the next section.

Reinstalling, uninstalling, and updating

Every installed card carries a menu with Reinstall and Uninstall; a not-yet-installed card's menu offers Install instead, plus Delete for a private upload you haven't installed yet. Reinstall re-runs the same preflight as a fresh install and keeps your environment variables and secrets. Uninstall removes the automation and everything it installed — its agents, workflows, pages, and their environment variables and secrets — while any integration it used stays connected for whatever else needs it.

Reinstalling never touches the automation's workflow: workflow steps are update-exempt, so whatever you've edited in the editor survives every reinstall and every catalog update. To pick up a workflow's latest shipped version, uninstall the automation and install it again — Tale repeats this reminder on the reinstall confirmation and on the automation's own Configuration tab.

Update built-in automations, in the same Add automation menu as Upload package, is a different action from either: it re-syncs every built-in automation in the organization against the shipped catalog in one pass — including ones you edited — rather than one card at a time. It carries the same workflow exemption and keeps secrets; the previous version of anything it changes lands in that automation's history.

Uploading a private automation

Upload package in the same menu adds an automation the catalog doesn't ship — drop a .zip, or select a folder containing an automation.json at its root; the folder or file name becomes the automation's slug. Uploading only adds it to the organization's private catalog; install it afterwards like any other card. Re-uploading over a slug that already exists asks you to confirm the replacement before it overwrites the existing package.

Where this fits

The catalog is the front door to every automation the organization can run: the side panel previews what installing adds, the wizard connects what it needs, and reinstall, uninstall, and update keep it current without touching a workflow you're mid-edit on. Built-in automations is the next read for what each shipped automation and the Resolve GitHub issues bundle actually do; Automation concepts is the mental model if you haven't read it yet.

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