Automation
Automation is ClusterCode handing a task to an AI agent that spins up a DevBox, does the work, and tears down — either on a recurring Schedule or as an on-demand Run. Every execution happens on infrastructure you own and control: your own workers and cloud workers, never a black-box cloud.
Two modes
Section titled “Two modes”| Schedules | Runs | |
|---|---|---|
| Trigger | A cron cadence (e.g. nightly) | You start it, once |
| Human | Autonomous — no one watching | Interactive — you can answer it |
| Can it ask you a question? | No (no human in the loop) | Yes — it pauses and asks |
| Best for | Recurring maintenance, periodic checks | Exploratory work, anything ambiguous |
Both run the same way under the hood: a coordinator plans the job and delegates the actual coding to an in-DevBox engine (Claude Code, Codex, or Copilot).
A Schedule is always autonomous. A Run can be either interactive (the default — it can pause and ask you) or autonomous (fire-and-forget, no prompts — a Schedule’s body fired once, on demand). So “can it ask you?” really tracks the mode, not whether it’s a Run.
What you can do with it
Section titled “What you can do with it”A few recipes to make it concrete:
- Nightly dependency audit — a Schedule that checks for vulnerable packages every night and opens a PR bumping them. → Schedules
- Flaky-test sweep — a Schedule that re-runs the e2e suite three times, finds flaky specs, and files issues with traces.
- “Refactor this and open a PR” — a Run you start from a ticket; it works in a DevBox, runs the tests, and opens the PR. → Runs
- A brainstorm that asks you questions — a Run where the agent pauses mid-task to confirm a decision before continuing. → Runs
It runs on infrastructure you own
Section titled “It runs on infrastructure you own”Automation doesn’t ship your code to someone else’s servers. Each Schedule or Run executes on a worker you registered or a cloud worker you provisioned — machines you control, behind your own network. You pick the host (or let ClusterCode choose from the ones you have), and the AI work bills against your own engine credentials.