Build and publish your first automation

Go to Automations → New automation and choose what starts it: a comment on a post/reel, a DM keyword, or a story mention/reply. For comment automations, pick a specific post or leave it as “any post.” Set the keyword that should trigger it, or leave it blank to match anything.

Draft, then publish

Write the DM you want sent, then click Publish. Automations save as drafts until you publish — nothing sends while you’re still setting it up, and you can leave and come back without losing work. Publishing runs a quick validation pass first (see Testing an automation before it goes live); a specific, plain-language error tells you what to fix if something’s missing.

The fastest way to see it work

The four one-click templates on the Automations page (a “link” comment reply, a giveaway-entry confirmation, a DM-keyword FAQ answer, and a story-mention thank-you) are real, editable automations, not previews — clicking one creates a genuine draft with the trigger and message pre-filled, so you can see a working example, tweak the wording to match your own offer, pick the specific post it should watch, and publish. They’re single-message starting points, not full flows — open the flow builder afterward if you want to add branching, a delay, or a second message.

What happens once it’s live

The first real comment or DM that matches your trigger fires it — you don’t need to do anything else, and there’s no separate “activate” step beyond Publish. New activity shows up in Activity and, if it started a conversation, in Inbox, both in real time. See Why didn’t my automation fire? if a comment or DM you expected to trigger it didn’t.